If you are experiencing sample playback issues, particularly with samples that are cut short or 'glitching', there are several areas to look at.
External Drives: If you are using an external drive, please make sure the drive is connected via USB 3.0 or higher. Slower hard drives (pre-USB 3.0 connectors, or slower spinning disk hard drives), can experience what is known as 'bottlenecking'. This is when the bandwidth available from the hard drive is less than what is required to effectively stream samples. For recommendations on external drives, please see our support article available here.
DAW Buffer Size: Please check your DAW buffer size. Increasing your DAW buffer size will give your computer more time to process samples, which can reduce your sample dropouts. For more information on this setting, please have a look at our support article here.
Dedicated Plugin Settings: If using a Spitfire Audio library that uses one of our dedicated plugins (i.e. it does not run in Kontakt), please first check your Maximum Voice settings and your Preload Buffer Size. If the Maximum Voice values are too small, it can cause what is known as "voice stealing" in which playing a new sample causes an already triggered sample to be cut off. Low preload buffer sizes, on the other hand, can cause undue strain on your CPU, resulting in glitches, pops, or clicks on playback. For more information on optimising Spitfire dedicated plugins, please see our support article here.
Kontakt Settings: If you are using a Spitfire Audio library that runs inside of Kontakt, the main setting to consider inside of Kontakt would be the DFD Buffer size. Increasing your DFD Buffer would be similar to the Preload Buffer Size in Kontakt. There is also a Maximum Voice setting to consider as well in the main Kontakt window when you load an instrument. Similarly to our dedicated plugin settings, too low of a Maximum Voice count can cause voice stealing. For full information on optimising Kontakt libraries, please see our support article here.
If the above steps do not remedy the issue, there may be a CPU limitation. If that is the case, the only additional workaround would be to look at freezing tracks to reduce CPU load. Please see the below articles for examples of how to do this in some of the more common DAWs.
- How To Freeze Tracks In Pro Tools
- How To Freeze Tracks in Logic