C8, ASIO Guard 2, and Kontakt Multiprocessing/Core settings

Cubase
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Anyone care to chime in with their experience so far?

With people who are seeing a large reduction in ASIO metering/usage in C8, how many cores are you allotting to Kontakt running inside C8, with ASIO Guard 2 enabled? Anybody done any experiments with different K5 core settings yet with respect to AG2?

After extensive testing with C7.5 here, I determined that, at least on my rigs, we had the highest load capacity and best overall performance by running everything [and I mean, EVERYTHING] in VEP on a local server instance outside of Cubase with C7.5 multithreading off, AG turned off, two threads per V-frame, everything divided into 12 v-frames, and multiprocessor off in K5. This is on a 2012 12-core MP running 10.8.5 with 96 gigs of RAM.

However… with all the ballyhooing about AG2 functioning similarly to Logic’s buffer now [I was on Logic for 20-ish years, starting with Notator, but finally gave it up for C7.5 compared to LPX], it’s looking like I should [ugh] re-think my template yet again, and adopt some of my prior best practices from LP9; namely to run more single mono-timbral instances of everything rather than multis; run most everything local inside the sequencer [I have multiple fully stand-alone slaves for the orchestral heavy-lifting, so I only run things that change from cue to cue in the main comp/sequencer - drums, specialty instruments, sound design, synths, etc. - it’s still a lot]. Steinberg seems to be recommending using more single instances with AG2, as it will calculate a multitimbral inst and track chain all on the record buffer once any midi track is monitor/record-enabled that points to it.

On that note, I wonder if, similar to Logic, everything downstream of a record-enabled inst. also gets calculated on the same thread with this new scheme [the dreaded one-core Logic-style overloads, anyone? :unamused: ] What if multiple vsti’s then have sends on their tracks to the same reverb/delay, etc.? Do all of them, and the return efx, shift to be processed on the record buffer too?

Alright everyone - please weigh in with your current experience, findings, and settings. Let’s see if we can find some consensus on the best way to maximize things under the newly improved AG2.

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I suspect in VE PRO with everything inside that you will get amazing results when no track attached is record enabled. Going back to the Logic method might yield very good results and the benefits of the plugin parameter communication when running inside cubase is a big plus but I suspect your current setup might still be the way to go. If you test the other way I would be very curious what your results are though.

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That’s a great question and mirrors a question Patenjali asked in another thread. I too have bounced back and forth between multitimbral configurations and stand alone instruments. VEP running remotely with 2 threads per frame has been outstanding. I’ve never really figured out if local VEP or instrument tracks is the better way to go. I am currently running VEP locally now, but I do occasionally get weird processor locks where the dummy cores are stuck at 100% from time to time.

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I would like to know more about VEP vs single instruments.
And with MIR Pro too.

My first test still in favour of VEP. I tried single vienna instruments with MIR Pro plugins vs a VEP instance with MIR pro processed inside VEP. VEP was the winner again.

Will do further testing when I have times. (With Kontakt instances)

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First of all, I discovered some crashes in Cubase caused by Kontakt5.dll so I am going to start hosting everything in VEP only. I’m looking for help as well on what to set Kontakt Multiprocessing as, cores in VEP, and Multiproc/ASIO guard in cubase…VSL was recommending to turn ASIOguard off on 7.5 but ASIO2 no one seems to know yet…

FYI I’m running a single instance of VEP with over 300 instruments in it and 10 of my 12 cores assigned to the VEP instance. thats definitely not the average situation, but the jury is still out on whether its better to run one instance or several smaller ones.

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Anyone have any new findings to report w/ AG2 and VEP ?

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Originally I had no CPU spike issues with CB8, then external forces (grrrr) forced me to reinstall Komplete. Then I started seeing all the same spike issues everyone else had (proving it’s a subtlety of installation - ie a bug) what I then did is activate multicore in Kontact (7 leaving one spare for general duties) despite it already being activated in Cubase and the spiking issue largely went away. The final drop in CPU use was achieved by deactivating automatic record arm. My V8.0.10 is now usable again. Prior to this I went through every iteration of Buffer and ASIO Guard 2 settings which didn’t make a jot of difference.

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Booked