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Komplete U upgrade space management


kitekrazy

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I don't have enough space to install all of it.  Some of it is bloated as well.

Debating on what old pianos to keep. 

Deleted Symphony Essential since I can't keep track of the other developers beginning orchestras.

Action Strings 2 worth installing?   

That solo violin rivals Soundpaint for bloatness.  Not gonna install that.

 

 

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Although I completely agree about a lot of the bloat & what pianos to keep, I at least found that having the version with the contents on SSD (installers only, mind you, not direct library access - what a shame) allows me to use Native Access to fairly quickly re-load an entire library. So, I tend to try a library out, and if I don't use it or need to free up some space, I delete it until I decide to use it again. -Better than downloading - or those boxes of discs!  -Still, yeah, I am not seeing much in the newer "instruments" they seem to be heading towards in those Komplete packages of late. Too many acid-y loops and whatever for me. But, I am getting old, so what do I know?

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On 6/2/2023 at 2:01 PM, kitekrazy said:

Action Strings 2 worth installing?  

Action Strings 2 is a huge improvement over the original. Basically a low and high ensemble that you can drill into and edit pretty easily (via the "editor" at the bottom when clicking an ensemble. Double-clicking a note/pattern in that editor then pulls up various note/phrase options with previews enabled. That said, it really comes down to if you are going to use it. I have only used it briefly to check it out, but it has good potential for quickly creating "moods" in orchestration.

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55 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

The next question is what pianos to keep that go back to like Komplete 10.  I do keep Alicias Keys.  I will install the new ones. 

Isn't the Berlin Grand an New York Grand from K10? I like those and play them often.

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19 minutes ago, craigb said:

If you have a ton of stuff, it certainly makes sense. But speed wise, it is a 6th of the speed  of a current MVMe. If you don't have a M.2 slot, well, this makes sense!

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1 hour ago, hockeyjx said:

If you have a ton of stuff, it certainly makes sense. But speed wise, it is a 6th of the speed  of a current MVMe. If you don't have a M.2 slot, well, this makes sense!

Like I said, I want to replace a 10 TB spinner, so it's just acting as mass storage for mostly training/learning videos.

However, since I've got a nice i9 built by Jim Roseberry, I might have an extra M.2 slot...   Hmm... 🤔

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22 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

I'd love to live in your world because 87 USD is not something I call "stupid cheap."

We got off topic.   When you fork out $200 for Komplete U that last thing I want to hear is how "cheap" drives are.  I prefer SATA SSD because I can use 6 SATA ports.  I still run Komplete of HDDs on some systems.  I started to delete plenty of never used Kontakt libraries.

I practically have all of Sampletekk pianos and thinking no need for the  Giant, Maverick. Granduer. and Gemtlemen.   I'm not really into pianos other than sketching for synths.   BTW those libraries load fine on a HDD.

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And, for even more perspective, that $8,499 is equivalent to $21,290.52 today!  😮

(Well, as of April, 2023, the most current month of data available using the inflation calculator.)

I still remember paying $510 the year before (1988) for a 20 MB hard drive (yes, MEGABYTE!).  That's $1,337.21 in today's dollars!

[Edit:  Just noticed that the monitor and mouse were not included in that computer for that price!  🤣]

Edited by craigb
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I'm glad computers are much cheaper now!  (I got my first one in '92, and had to add a sound card.)

Regarding Kontakt libraries and hard drives, the libraries that have thousands of small files (like under 1 MB) actually load slower from an SSD than a hard drive.  I have tested access times when copying thousands of these files, and it explains why some Kontakt libraries (particularly those by 8Dio) load extremely slow, even from an NVME drive.

I don't know where the dividing line is for size vs speed efficiency, but I put all my Kontakt libraries with large sample files (like with the .nkx extension) on an SSD / NVME drive, but those with thousands of small files on a regular HDD.  I'd guess the difference is because of the cache that a mechanical drive has.  For those less nerdy than me, a mechanical hard drive reads in a large chunk of data at once and stores it in fast memory onboard the drive, which greatly speeds up access since often the next file you need is next on the drive (which is why you don't want them fragmented).  My 6TB hard drive has 256MB of cache.  So for Kontakt libraries with sample files under 1MB, my mechanical drive reads in hundreds of them at once.  And thus my mechanical HDD can actually outperform my NVME drive in select scenarios.

So my point is, don't assume that putting Kontakt libraries on an SSD will make them faster.  For some it's much faster, but for some it's worse.  And that's good news, because now you know (and knowing is half the battle, some say), and buying a large HDD is cheaper than SSD.

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On 6/5/2023 at 12:38 AM, kitekrazy said:

I practically have all of Sampletekk pianos and thinking no need for the  Giant, Maverick. Granduer. and Gemtlemen.   I'm not really into pianos other than sketching for synths. 

If you are keeping Alicia's Keys, then you probably have all you need as is.

Another thing to consider is your download speed and data limits if applicable. Not everyone has stupid fast/unlimited internet, so trying and deleting massive libraries can be more painful than updating a drive. An external (or even internal if have space) HDD can help in those situations as well.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Piano Colors doesn't seem to justify the space needed after auditioning a few patches .  It's basically a synth.  What does it really offer that you can't do in the popular synths. But I will probably leave they it on there. 

Edited by kitekrazy
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Buy a 2TB Crucial PCIe 4 NVMe drive for $85 and just install everything.  Put it in a cheap enclosure and just install to that.  Use what you want to use when you have need of it.  If you have a desktop, you can just add a 2TB SATA3 SSD, label it "Native Instruments" and dedicate that drive to their stuff so you have room to accomodate any future releases you acquire.  You don't really need NVMe, unless you're using it externally, so you can saturate a 10Gb/s USB 3.2 port (or Thunderbolt).

Needs can change, so whether you use a specific instrument today can change in 4-6 months (we all say and think it never will 😉).  It's annoying to have to download multi-GB libraries on-demand when you figure you have need for it.

Also, if you collaborate with anyone else, they may use things that you don't use, so having it there and ready for when you have to open a project file that uses the library or instrument is useful.

As for why the Violin and some other instruments weigh a lot...  It's because they're actually trying to deliver good quality instruments that are usable up and down the market.  Ripping out Mic Positions, Round Robins, Dynamic Layers and Articulations just so it can stay under 5GB (or whatever) is not the route to that destination.  All premium orchestral instruments weigh a lot, unless you're using a Lite SKU of the product - where those aforementioned things are done to create disparity with the Pro SKU.

Compare the size of BBCSO Core (~20GB) to BBCSO Pro (~700GB).  Or Session Horns/Strings to Session Horns/Strings Pro.  Or Symphony Essentials (~19GB Total) to Symphony Series: Collection (~167 GB Total).  That is how this all works.  There is no Cremona Quartet Essentials.  The only instruments that exist are those that would fall into the Pro SKU.  They're heavy libraries, but making them lighter would actually decrease the value of them... so in the end you probably wouldn't want to install it for that reason if that were done.

Komplete isn't designed to have everything appeal to everyone, anyways.  It's designed to have enough that appeals to any one person to justify investing in the bundle.  There are tons of Expansions that I will probably never use because they are Genre-Targeted and I don't produce e.g. EDM, Trance or Drum & Bass music.

Get more storage while the prices are heavily depressed.  Prices have a way of rebounding at the most inopportune times 😛 

 

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