I use DiskWarrior to look at and keep track of the directory data of my discs. I have noticed that my boot/system drive is much happier with the constant adding/deleting/changing/thrashing I do while working on my iTunes libraries, is on its own disc. I hardly have any directory fragmenting and such. It seems that, for me anyway, that this change, having iTunes on its own HD limits system maintenance and problems. I never thought to put the finger on iTunes prior.

I use iTunes differently than most? I have my library on its own SSD as noted above, and my AIFF/ACC files on another RAID drive(s). I use Command O to import the files I wish to this library. (Using the Option key while starting up iTunes lets one create and or select the library you wish to use.) I have created a ripping library, a working and or converting library, an ACC and AIFF library. They switch back and forth as fast as you can quit the program and hit the iTunes icon in the dock, while holding down the Option key.

This has made my life a lot simplier and a bunch faster. I load what I need/want and leave the rest on the AIFF/ACC HD’s. I have noticed that the size of my files gets out of control on the SSD. No problem, from time to time I just format the drive and start over. Now remember this SSD HD has NO files, AIFF or ACC that reside upon it. Or only long enough for me to rip them and put them away. I just keep the pointers on the iTunes SSD drive. This is wicked fast… I find scrolling through all of my albums, in any view mode, to be a thing of beauty and joy. NOT the pain that I have endured prior.

The new 64 bit program is a much welcomed addition to iTunes. My converting times have gone from 45 x to 60 x. This is converting AIFF’s to ACC’s. Ripping time is the same as before. It seems that file size, in the new 64 bit version of iTunes are a tad larger than they were prior. A small price to pay for the speed and general handling improvements of the latest version of iTunes.

At times I have both AIFF’s & ACC’s loaded together, this is 150,000+ songs… and I am able to get around and edit/tag/fix years etc. without much of a problem. This is a ton better than what I was experieancing.

Things I have learned. Your music files are much happier, when you tag them, add the artwork, lyrics etc. et al. Anything you do or may want to do. while the files are on/in the ripping HD. Changes made to song names will change in the album folder. You can change the track numbers and such and they will be the same as in the file. If you do this “remotely” as I call it. Having your files on the main disc and or storage of your choice, the data will change for the song, but the data in the album folder will be unchanged. An interesting paradox. I like my files and my meta data to be one and the same. It seems that file size gets bigger when you wait to fix your tags. A comparison of a fresh ripped and tagged album and one that was made to the same standard in a haphazard method differ for the worse.

We all know, or should know that if you change a single . (dot) in a file, iTunes will rewrite the whole file. It does so once for itself and once for the XML file. I lock my XML files to stop half of this nonsense. My point here being that files that are ripped and tagged to your current standards… make the best iTunes database files. They are not “exploded” and or spread all over your storage HD(s). Looking at drives with iDefrag shows what a mess of the file gets made when you edit later. I’ve got so that if I don’t have time to do it right, it will have to wait until I can. Files created and placed on your storage drive, that are in one piece, are happier files. Yes, the computer can find all the bits and pieces… that is not the point here.

Album art: iTunes uses the artwork from the first song, as the display icon. Knowing this now, I use smaller and compressed versions for all remaining tracks/songs. For example in my ACC’s I use a 320×320 in the first/head file and 256×256 or 160×160 for the balance of the tracks. If I want to see the “Big Picture” I can go to the first track/song and there it is. The rest of the songs/tracks only need the artwork to ID them. This saves a bit of space and makes the files quicker to handle. I want the smallest file that has the best quality. You can bend this bit of info to fit your own specific needs as you require.

iTunes works regardless of the metrology one uses. Apple has done a wonderful job here. I am just sharing some hard won insight into what could be an improved method of creating your files. I am also happy to wave goodbye to the spinning beach ball of death as well.

Now I’ve said it, watch the beach ball show up again…

Rodney J. Sorensen

And I do edit the ID3 tags and put movie posters within the tag.

The lag didn’t begin until i started to rip all of my DVDs and add them to iTunes. I’ve began purchasing movies via iTunes in stead of DVDs, and i can’t believe Apple hasn’t done anything to improve performance especially with the new Apple TV not having on board storage, and the launch of Airplay

However, for your home setup, this is odder. 20K tracks is not much, and as long as you don’t do anything to your movies (such as tagging), iTunes won’t read those files once they’re in the library.

I have the same issue. I have around 20,000 tracks, and I ripped my entire DVD collection have around 1,000 movies.

I have two instances of my collection running, a copy at home, and another copy in my office.

At my office I have a year old iMac accessing the music and movies over the network all media hosted on a NAS, and at home I have a AMD Phenom 2 6-core with 4 gig of ram, with four 1tb drives that run at 6gb/s.

And either way I still get tremendous lag.

As anyone used a program like doubtwist? and will any third-party program worth with apple tv?

My guess is that there’s something going on that would be really interesting to discover (especially because if I could find out what’s going on, I could write a Macworld article about it.)

Are you interested in hooking up for a voice chat, maybe with screen sharing, via iChat? I’d like to see what’s happening, and see if I can figure out why yours is so slow. You can email me at the address near the top of the sidebar on this page.

iTunes just sucks the life out of computers, it would seem. My son keeps telling me that iTunes was not designed to be a editing platform, just a listening one.

I’m getting the spinning beach ball of death on iTune’s tag edits, still. It is some better, but not enough so as to be worth the time and or money. I tried to build a iTunes work station. I guess I could have gotten the faster, six core 3.33 machine… but I’ll wager even it would choke. I have 89500 out of 120,000 songs loaded in iTunes as I write this. I’m at a loss, in what to do or try next. Other things/programs are wonderfully “snappy.” I enjoy a fast mac… so all is not in vain. BUT I though I could leverage iTunes, to work as fast as I do. But that is not happening, and it don’t look like it is going to in the near short term.

Perhaps the new, upcoming OS Lion will give us some wonderful new performance upgrade? I expect a new iTunes version to go along with the changes to Lion. One can only wait and hope that Apple will fix the database hog that iTunes has come to be. Thoughts and or suggestions… I’d love to talk to someone who has a bigger collection, and a Mac that works up to speed.

Cheers all…

I turned off live updating on all but 2 of my smart playlists…ill try turning those off…but i believe i did try that

Do you have any smart playlists? I’d be interested in hearing what happens if you turn off live updating on all of them.

If you’re using FireWire, you probably have a Mac; what model?

Doesn’t Apple read any of these comments!!

For context, I have used iTunes since the beginning on flowerpot iMacs to my current set up macbookpro i7. I have over 154,000 songs stored on a lacie d2 7200 rpm 1.5 tb hard drive connected via firewire 800 and iTunes is fast for a couple reasons, I now have a top of the line MacBook pro, 8gb ram and a 7200 rpm internal hard drive. I also removed all video files to another computer, a 2006 MacBook, it has over 600 movies and 1245 tv shows, it pretty much serves content to my apple tv.

Also, have you installed any new software lately that might slow down your computer, notably antivirus software?