Author Topic: Tips for managing huge libraries?  (Read 1985 times)

soundtrackgeek

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Hi,

I'm struggling currently with a massive library (51K albums, 757K tracks). It's really slow to use. I am currently using filters to split up the library a bit, but sometimes I want to go to the main library and it's too slow and I get frustrated.

What is everyone else with a library similar as mine doing? Is there any way to speed things up?

phred

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https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=5318.0
Quick read through most of it, but read carefully from the top of page 11.

What version of MB are you using? (Help > About)
How was MB installed? (Store, Installer, Portable)

Most likely it's your PC and not MB.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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soundtrackgeek

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Running version 3.4.8033 P
It's a portable installation.

My PC specs: AMD Ryzen 7 2700x, 32 GB Ram

Strangely when I wrote that at the top of page 11 it felt OK to use (Edit: I did have 3 separate installs and libraries for this, so that would explain how it was still quite fast). I've added around 30K tracks since then and aorund 7500 albums.

The portable installation is on a M2 SSD while the music library is on a standard 7200rpm 8TB harddisk (internal).

Do you think I need a PC upgrade? What's recommended for libraries such as mine?
Last Edit: January 29, 2022, 08:50:05 AM by soundtrackgeek

vincent kars

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Open the Windows Resource Monitor (resmon)
Open MusicBee and start using it

Check Resmon for peaking e.g. memory full, I/O 100%, etc.
Might give you an indication where the bottleneck is.

phred

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The portable installation is on a M2 SSD while the music library is on a standard 7200rpm 8TB harddisk (internal).
Do you think I need a PC upgrade? What's recommended for libraries such as mine?
First - do as vincent kars suggests and report back.

Personally I don't think your PC needs to be upgraded. As you probably know the best way to increase speed is to increase RAM. But with 32gb RAM, I think you're okay.

If anything, I'd reverse the application install and the music files. The SSD is faster than the HDD. The application needs to load into RAM and run. The music files are getting accessed frequently. Vincent is pretty damn good with this stuff and may have a comment on my comment.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

vincent kars

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We have 3 components, the app, the library and the audio files.
Operating system, page file, app all on the fastest so the SSD.
The library ( everyone calls it so but it is the catalog) is a database. This is the one doing the hard work when querying, filtering, browsing, etc. your collection. This again on SSD.
Might be the database is cached as well. If so, more memory might help to speed up.
Audio files on a HD.
If you start from scratch, things are horrible slow. The media player has to open each audio file, read all the tags and store this information in the library.
Second time is much faster. All the media player has to do is to compare date last modified in the file system with its equivalent in the database. Had to detect new files as well but I don’t think you are hit by a performance penalty as Musicbee does this quietly in the background.
8 TB in SSD might be a bit too expensive as well at the present.

You can try a couple of tricks like disabling the page file.
If Win starts to protest (running out of memory) you know that adding RAM will help assuming 64 bit Win.
https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Windows/Win7/TweaksSystem.htm

phred

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Audio files on a HD.
Thanks for specifying that, vincent. I sort of implied that but didn't spell it out.
Hopefully this will get things sorted out for the OP.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

yvev

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My music library is not as big as yours, with 7000+ albums totaling 120,000+ songs.
I think musicbee is the fastest and best software for my music management on win. I put the database files in the laptop and the music files (including hi-res and dsf files) on a NAS and mapped to the laptop. So, I don't think the hardware is the problem.
The only time I feel that opening the library is very slow is when many albums use very large cover files (the size of the pictures is larger than 2M, and some even larger than 10M). When I control the file size of all album covers to be less than 1M, this problem no longer occurs.

Steven

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its a very long time ago i did tests with a dummy library of 600,000 tracks and I recall the main slowness was the sorting of tracks when loading the panel. It took around 30 seconds. So that was with old hardware and MB has been improved quite a bit since then. If thats what you are referring to by slowness then the disc drive wont make much difference as the database is loaded in memory. I guess faster CPUs could make a difference.
If its the initial loading of the library panel, you could look at using filters to reduce the number of tracks loaded

Roby

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One more thing. Check that the HD and also the SSD have at least 10% free space (more is better) otherwise the performance will drop. For the other settings don't worry. If you use W10 or W11 the operating system is able to handle an SSD for the best. Make sure the library file is defragmented.

phred

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Make sure the library file is defragmented.
It is recommended that SSDs should not be defragged. It only increases the write cycles of the drive, thereby shortening its life.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

Roby

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I know SSD don't need defragmentation. The advice is for the mechanical HD where the MB library is contained

[The portable installation is on a M2 SSD while the music library is on a standard 7200rpm 8TB harddisk (internal).]

soundtrackgeek

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its a very long time ago i did tests with a dummy library of 600,000 tracks and I recall the main slowness was the sorting of tracks when loading the panel. It took around 30 seconds. So that was with old hardware and MB has been improved quite a bit since then. If thats what you are referring to by slowness then the disc drive wont make much difference as the database is loaded in memory. I guess faster CPUs could make a difference.
If its the initial loading of the library panel, you could look at using filters to reduce the number of tracks loaded


Yep. That's pretty much what I'm experiencing. I think it might be my CPU that's the bottleneck. I'll probably go back to splitting up my libraries like I used to do.