If you are having performance problems with KONTAKT (audio dropouts, distortion, digital noise or pops/clicks, etc.), here are some important things you can check:

1. Make sure you have the latest update of KONTAKT installed. You can check the version you have installed by clicking the KONTAKT logo on the interface, you will see a small About window open and the version number will be listed.

2. Try increasing the audio buffer size in KONTAKT's Audio/MIDI Setup (when running as a standalone) or in the preferences of your host application.

3. Check where your Kontakt Library is located. You will get the best performance if your library is on an additional hard drive separate from your system drive or the drive where you store your audio projects. The speed and bandwidth of the hard drive are also important. You will get best results with a fast drive (7200RPM or greater), with a large cache size (8MB is OK, 16MB is better). As far as connectivity, the best/fastest interface protocols are SATA, FireWire, USB 2, and SCSI (on older systems). These factors can have a very significant effect on the performance you will get from a disk-streaming sampling instrument like KONTAKT. If you are using KONTAKT in a very demanding environment, running many sampled instruments, you should consider getting an even faster hard drive with an RPM speed of 10000 or 15000. These are more expensive but they can give a very substantial increase in performance.

4. Compare the CPU speed and RAM of your system to the requirements of your host program as well as KONTAKT (you will find them on the package or on the product page in the internet. Note! that these system requirements are for running KONTAKT as a standalone program with nothing else running on the computer. If you are running KONTAKT within a host program such as Pro Tools or Logic, the computer will need sufficient resources to run the host application as well. If possible you may try adding RAM to your system to make sure there is enough memory to run KONTAKT as well as the host application you are using, this can make a huge difference in performance.

5. Check and make sure that you are not using any unnecessary effects in your instruments. If you load up a number of instruments in KONTAKT and each one has its own reverb inserted, for example, you will quickly use up a great deal of CPU power unnecessarily. Turn off/delete any effects you are not using to save CPU resources. This can also make a very significant difference in performance. For example, in the case described here, you could save a great deal of CPU power by using only one reverb effect on one of KONTAKT's Aux outputs and then sending part of the output of each individual instrument to that channel when you want to add reverb.

6. Check your DFD settings in KONTAKT. Usually you should not have to adjust these, but if you are having problems you can try adjusting the following options: open the Options menu and click on the DFD tab>open the Expert Settings>set the Channel Buffer Size to 384kb and Reserved Channel Buffers to 400-500. For each instrument that you are loading: open the instrument (DFD) options and set the "Preload Buffer Size" to 120kb; you can experiment with setting this as high as 192 KB if you have plenty of RAM in your system. Important: note that the instrument needs to be saved in order to retain this setting the next time you load it. You can also make use of the Override Instrument's Preload size function in the global Options on the DFD tab: If enabled, KONTAKT will ignore the preload buffer size that's embedded in Instrument files and use the specified buffer size instead.

7. Check the Multiprocessor support setting under Options: Audio Engine. Only activate multiprocessing when running at higher audio buffer sizes (your SOUNDCARD buffer size, that is), adjustable Multiprocessing runs best at a buffer size of 1024 or higher. This is true for standalone as well as for the plugin. Using multiprocessing at lower buffer sizes causes a high CPU overhead and you lose performance instead of improving it. If you are using Pro Tools 7 with RTAS processors set to two or more (in Pro Tools under Setup>Playback Engine), in KONTAKT you should always deactivate multiprocessing.

8. If you are using an instrument with a long sustain/decay on each voice, it may help significantly if you turn DOWN the maximum number of voices, which can be set on the instrument itself (the setting says Voices MAX). This setting works like this: if the instrument's samples have a long sustain/release, it is likely that its voice count jumps up when a phrase of many quick notes is played. If you set the max voice count lower, this can be avoided and more resources remain for the other instruments. Of course, the voice count setting must be selected carefully, so that the 'voice-stealing' which then starts naturally will not be very noticeable. This only works with certain kind of instruments, examples: timpani or other percussive sounds with long release tails, pizzicato strings, and so on. This setting does not improve the performance itself naturally. But it will likely make your song play better, as no resources will be wasted for playing sounds which are not audible anyway.

9. Make sure that you have not maxed out your RAM, so virtual memory is not in use for the samples.
To do so on Mac: Start Activity Monitor (from Applications/Utilities). In this application press the memory tab: now load your song or or the KONTAKT patch and observe the memory usage shown in Activity Monitor. When simultanously_free memory_ reaches 10 MB approx. AND inactive memory reaches 80 MB approx., the OS will very likely start to use virtual memory. This will certainly make realtime audio processing impossible.