Voice Stealing Mode in KONTAKT 3

No matter how powerful your computer, if you are playing back a complex sequence with lots of instruments, you will eventually run out of notes, though this can be 100 notes or more, depending on your specific computer’s processing speed, RAM, and so forth. In Native Instruments KONTAKT 3, you can set which notes are “stolen” after the theoretical maximum is reached by going into the Group Editor. The Mode setting is where you select which notes get stolen first. Options include Oldest, Newest, Lowest, Highest, and so forth, but the best option is often Kill Any, which lets Kontakt make the decision about which notes get stolen. Meanwhile, in the Instrument Edit Mode (also known as the Rack), you can set the Voice-Stealing Fadeout Time. That’s right, Kontakt actually fades a note out rather than simply turning it off abruptly, which can sometimes be audible. Shorter times are better in most situations unless the song has a slow tempo with many sustained notes, in which case you’ll probably want to set this value a bit higher.