I’m saying:
One Instrument Track with one instance of Kontakt and only 1 patch
The overhead is only memory, which according the earlier linked post might be 33 megs per instance. Memory is cheap and plentiful, realtime load balancing across CPU’s is not.
You can use more than one patch per Kontakt instance but you may find that a single Kontakt instance runs out of CPU capacity and pops/clicks because as a VSTi it should be single threaded, allowing Cubase to manage thread assignment across all plugins. (This is the default for Kontakt as a VSTi).
Let me illustrate with a recent example. I’ll do this as a narrative which will hopefully be clear around the options available to you and why I made my choices. It doesn’t matter if you use a track or rack instrument configuration for this. Apologies for it being a bit long.
Starting point:
Multiple tracks, single Kontakt instance with 6 patches - Violin ensemble, Viola Ensemble, Cello Ensemble, Double Bass Ensemble, Evolve Patch, Alicia Keys patch
Result: In a busy orchestral section Kontakt runs out of CPU capacity and we get drop outs
Solution 1:
- Enable Kontakt VST multi-processing
– Worked fine for a while until I started tracking with the video playback then drop outs, sputtery video playback. Not fun.
Solution 2:
- Separate out the String sections into 4 separate Kontakt instances with one patch each. It was pretty obvious from the CPU usage monitors in Kontakt that these patches were loading up the CPU and wanted a thread each.
- Kept the other instruments grouped (cause I am lazy)
- Turn off Kontakt VST multi-processing (now knowing why this is the default )
– No more problem, slightly more memory used - but I still had 12 Gigs free so who cares!
Solution 3:
- Separate out the last of the patches into own instances - why? Cubase can load balance better, consistency in use. I also believe some other feature of Track Instruments, freezing etc will work better. Now I only use multiple patches in a single Kontakt instrument if I am playing them as a single instrument (e.g. all same midi channel) and I don’t have a CPU issue on that instance.
It’s only memory after all and I have two more slots on the motherboard should I need them.
In summary:
- You can group patches into a single instance if you want to save RAM and none are to demanding on the CPU thread
- You can split them out if you want better load balancing across threads.
- Don’t enable VSTi multi-processing in Kontakt.
As for VEP5, I’ve only read the manual on that, I don’t use it. From what I can tell it simply does a better job of the load balancing (even across multiple computers). I’m not entirely certain why it doesn’t interfere with Cubase multi-processing in quite the same way I’ve experienced with Kontakt. Perhaps Cubase and VEP come to an agreement about how much resources each get to use. That is entirely possible (processor affinity can be set) but I’ve no idea if it is done. Personally I like the idea of getting VEP and using it with multiple computers, but can’t see a need on one just at the moment.
Hope that helps.
Rob