Comments on: iTunes and Large Libraries: Still Slow, Slow, Slow

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:14:36 +0000

Turns out my problem was software related. I finally broke down and did an erase and install of the OS and now everything is working well. Go figure (I had previously recreated the library from the xml file, downgraded from 10.6, archive installed the OS all to no avail.)
Anyways, if it is any use to those of you still having difficulties, I have a large library (90MB, 63,000 songs, 405GB) and it is now running relatively well. Beachballing for less than 10 seconds when adding new albums. pausing for less than 5 seconds when editing tags.

By: kirk

kirk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:00:10 +0000

About 46K tracks, currently. No, iTunes 9 didn’t change anything for me.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:57:38 +0000

Kirk, how big is your library now? Have you experienced any changes with iTunes 9?

By: kirk

kirk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:25:15 +0000

I don’t think any program works better than iTunes with large libraries. At least I’ve never heard of any, including the many Windows programs that handle music.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:18:47 +0000

It is nice to find other people with large itunes collections. When calling Apple, I have been unable to find a tech who has any experience with large libraries. Anyways, I have recently been having issues with slowness in importing already ripped cds to my library (I use a separate program to rip) I can deal with the slowness but if I click on the itunes window by accident, or scroll within the window iTunes and OS X often crash. I am using iTunes 9.01 with 64k songs and 89MB library file running on a 3ghz imac with 4gb ram. Plenty of free hard drive space and both ram and hard drive test ok. Apple keeps telling me it must be hardware or a software corruption issue–that library size should not affect iTunes performance. I love iTunes and have been using it happily for years but does anyone know of music manager for the mac that handles the database more efficiently?

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:52:22 +0000

If you are using FOLDERS in iTunes to organize your Playlist, get rid of them, the Folders, that is, that might solve your issue. I have over 45K songs, 246GB along with nearly 600GB of movies and TV Shows and iTunes is brisk on a lowly G5 iSight iMac. One other thing, ALWAYS use a Firewire Drive, there is a drastic difference between Firewire and USB, not sure why but there is. Good Luck

By: CalBruin

CalBruin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:33:33 +0000

Thank God, I am not the only person who has suffered this problem.
I upgraded my computer thinking it was old and slow.

All along, the size of my iTunes library was the cause.
(I some suspected this when using my almost empty iTunes on my G3 laptop which ran faster than my Leopard running desktop.)

I look forward to Apple’s or some one’s work-around to this bugging problem.

By: kirk

kirk — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:39:23 +0000

I don’t think the RAID would make much of a difference; the read/write speed doesn’t seem to be what slows down iTunes, but rather the writing of its library files. But it is much, much faster now.

By: schweinsteiger

schweinsteiger — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:49:24 +0000

It seems that the latest iTunes update 8.1.1 has addressed this issue. I do see a much better performance now. Still the beachball will show up once in a while, but at least not ALL the times.

I just got a new MacPro and am considering setting up a striped RAID array with three 1TB HDs (with CCC backup and the OS & apps on a separate HD) for work files and mp3s.

I somehow expect a better disk read/write for my iTunes media files from this …

Anyone has experience with this setup?

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:21:32 +0000

I don’t know the logic behind the way they write the library. There must be
something to do with preventing the database from getting corrupted or out of
sync. But since you can’t really perform more than one operation at a time, I’m
not sure why. Frankly, I have a feeling that it’s just not designed for large
libraries, and that they’d have a lot of work to ensure better performance. I’ve
written about this for Macworld several times, so Apple is certainly aware of the
issues.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:33:25 +0000

Since the response time is very short with small libraries, why Apple would not
use some kind of "differential update" of the Library file (like any iPod sync or,
iPhone sync, or like SmartUpdate with SuperDuper …). That could considerably
shorten the "write" time when needed, rather to re-write it entirely ???
Hope someone from Apple iTunes development read all those complaints
sometimes … and does some smart development of iTunes …

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:37:55 +0000

Fully agree and share your experience. Mac Pro 8 core 3,2GHz 10GB and still
very slow response to changes. 90MB library re-writen each time something
new. iTunes 8 further deteriorates the situation. I use the same trick (open
empty iTunes to work fast whenever I have to do heavy work). It’s a shame
Apple does NOTHING for their best customers.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:31:13 +0000

First, it _is_ the library file writing that is the problem. But whenever you copy
a file to your library, the library file gets re-written. The only other solution
would be to have the program parse the disk to see what’s where; that would
be much slower.

As for the organization points you make, I still don’t see the problem. First,
the Compilations folder still has compilations organized by album; it doesn’t
just toss the tracks there. The iTunes Music folder (which doesn’t have to be
in your user folder; I have a hard disk dedicated for my music) keeps things
organized perfectly, by artist and album, so if you ever want to back up files
by sorting them (though, again, I only back up my entire disk) you can.

iTunes lets you keep your music where you want; you can have it not
organize folders for you, but then you’d put the music where you want and
add it to your iTunes library; iTunes doesn’t move it, it just notes the location.

But it’s a computer – don’t you want it doing things for you? Do you worry
about your e-mail program organizing your e-mail? Or do you spend time
moving your messages around and expect your e-mail program to follow?

By: schweinsteiger

schweinsteiger — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:11:30 +0000

I somehow doubt not copying the individual files to the iTunes library contributes to the slowness. It seems to be the library file writing process that produces the beach ball spinning.

I never use Genius, smart playlists, I never rate my music, nor do I want to know how often I’ve played each track, etc. So it pains me to think that all this keeping track of statistics in iTunes is to no use to me, but it does slow down the program. This is where I wish for a "no-frills" iTunes

I’ve never used Windows, but when I used iTunes the first time I was horrified at the idea of the program "taking over" … putting the files in my user folder, re-organizing subfolders etc. It seemed like the right thing to do for all the newbies with iMacs who just want the machine do all the organizing. To me it was weird, especially the idea having one "Compilations" folder with thousands of tracks. For any individual back-up plans, that’s not so ideal….

Also, my library wouldn’t fit on a single internal HD anyway, at least I have it all on a couple of internal HDs.

Do other people have similar problems/concerns with their itunes collection?

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:30:59 +0000

I’m just guessing here, but it may be that "organizing your folders yourself" –
which seems to be an obsession with Windows users carried over from MP3
players where you manually add files and folders – could slow down iTunes. It
means that the program has to look in a number of different locations to find
files.

Again, it’s just a guess, but it would be worth testing someday…