I wanted to share some feedback regarding Engine OS 5.0.1 after using it live during a show tonight. I really appreciate many parts of the update — especially the faster library navigation and metadata loading, which honestly feels much smoother and more responsive than before. However, I also experienced several serious issues that negatively affected my performance.
The biggest issue is related to the lighting control touchscreen behavior. Before this update, the lighting section supported proper multi-touch functionality. During live performances, especially during high-energy moments, I often trigger multiple actions simultaneously — for example:
activating strobe,
changing lights to white,
and triggering the smoke/fog effect at the same time.
Before 5.0.1 this worked correctly. Now, the screen usually only recognizes the first touch, and sometimes partially the second one. For example:
strobe + white works,
or smoke + white works,
but true multi-touch behavior seems to be gone or unreliable.
This became extremely frustrating during performance situations because timing matters a lot when syncing lights and effects with music drops.
The second major issue is much more concerning:
Several times during the night, when I loaded a track onto Deck 1 while Deck 2 was actively playing, the audio briefly cut out or glitched, almost like an interference or interruption in playback. In a live environment, this is a critical stability problem.
I genuinely like many things about 5.0.1 and I can tell there are performance improvements in the system overall, but stability and reliability during live performance are far more important. Unfortunately, tonight these issues made the show much more difficult than normal — honestly, at moments it felt like the update hurt the performance experience instead of improving it.
I care a lot about this platform and I would even be willing to volunteer as a beta tester for future versions if that helps improve stability and real-world live performance testing.
Thank you for your work and I hope this feedback helps.
I’ve been using my drive since engine 4.3.4, where I did sync my library to my drive and run the clean up. It never gave me does glitches before. Either the problem with the multi touch screen in the lightning are.
Actually I do have a gig today and everything is packed, I’ll try to get some videos to show about the lighting multi touch issue. En tomorrow I’ll be doing some texting at home to get the video showing the audio drop/ lag/ glitch when you load a new track in a diferent deck.
Tonight again it was a nightmare. The multi-touch screen in the lighting section is still not working properly. It feels like the system cannot handle loading a track while using lighting controls at the same time. I experienced glitches, audio dropouts, and to make things worse, at the end of the night the system suddenly rebooted just because I tried to load a track.
At this point, my advice to other users would be: DO NOT upgrade to 5.0 or 5.0.1. I’ve decided to downgrade to a more stable version because these issues are affecting live performances and making the system unreliable in real-world use.
Please take this seriously. This update has made my shows significantly more difficult and stressful.
Btw, not everything is bad. I really love how fast Amazon Music is now, and it’s amazing that we can rate tracks with stars directly from the hardware. Also, the new daytime mode and quick access from the main menu are great additions.
But losing stability during live performances is simply not worth it. Reliability should always come first.
I came to the forum to make sure everything was working properly before updating. I appreciate your feedback and will follow your advice to wait before updating to the new version.
Stability is critical for those of us who use the equipment professionally. I encountered serious problems in previous versions that made my work a nightmare.
I’m very happy with the equipment and the software improvements, but I should never compromise stability, as you mentioned in your comments.
i really need to downgrade, currently having so many issues, database got corrupted twice and non of the art albums cover are in. not that great.
Claude with some help to debug.
## Issue: SC Live 4 wipes m.db on connect, leaves identical "partial rebuild" state
### Environment
- **Hardware:** SC Live 4
- **SC Live 4 firmware:** [check your device → swipe down → About/Update — fill this in]
- **Engine DJ Desktop:** 5.0.0.12d16a34d4
- **macOS:** 26.5 (build 25F71), using new `fskit` exfat driver
- **Drive:** [your SSK model — e.g. "SSK SD600 1TB USB 3.2"], exfat, mounted noatime
### Reproduction (2 consecutive events, different firmware versions)
1. Use Engine DJ Desktop with library on SSK — works normally, full library visible
2. Quit Engine DJ
3. Eject the drive via Finder, plug into SC Live 4
4. Power on SC Live 4 (library appears)
5. Power off, unplug, plug back into Mac
6. Open Engine DJ Desktop → library is empty (0 tracks)
Reproduced on:
- Event 1: 2026-05-23, SC Live 4 firmware [old version — fill in]
- Event 2: 2026-05-24, SC Live 4 firmware [new version — fill in]
### Forensic data on the post-event m.db
Pulled with `sqlite3` directly from the SSK after each event:
| | Healthy (pre-event) | Event 1 corrupt | Event 2 corrupt |
|---|---|---|---|
| File size | 29,831,168 B | 167,936 B | 167,936 B |
| `SELECT id FROM Information` | 9f46b908-bb30-... | d06da761-4cf6-... | fff22ffe-11ff-... |
| `PRAGMA schema_version` | 1 | 46 | 45 |
| `PRAGMA journal_mode` | wal | delete | delete |
| `PRAGMA integrity_check` | ok | ok | ok |
| Track | 5655 | 0 | 0 |
| Playlist | 251 | 159 | 159 |
| PlaylistEntity | 21567 | 69 | 69 |
| PlaylistAllChildren | 202 | 95 | 95 |
| PlaylistAllParent | 453 | 254 | 254 |
| PlaylistPath | 251 | 159 | 159 |
| AlbumArt | 5669 | 0 | 0 |
| PerformanceData | 5655 | 0 | 0 |
| ChangeLog | 0 rows | 0 rows | 0 rows |
| Pack | 1 row | 0 rows | 0 rows |
### Interpretation
- Post-event `m.db` is a **brand-new SQLite DB**, not damaged data — different `Information.id` UUID each time, fresh `delete` journal mode, high schema_version cookie (lots of DDL = schema rebuild)
- **Deterministic partial rebuild**: exact same 159 / 69 / 95 / 254 / 159 row counts across two independent events on different firmware. The SC Live 4 appears to rebuild from a consistent source (likely `hm.db`) but stops before importing tracks/AlbumArt/PerformanceData.
### Likely culprit
Schema mismatch between Engine DJ Desktop 5.0 and current SC Live 4 firmware. Desktop 5.0's per-release-notes "database overhaul" (album art externalization, schema changes) may be producing an `m.db` that the SC Live 4 firmware doesn't recognize, so it rebuilds.
### Recovery
Restored from a SQLite online-backup snapshot taken before the event. Library back to 5655 tracks, integrity ok.
### Disclosure (full transparency)
I run a third-party menubar tool of my own that reads `m.db` and writes to `PreparelistEntity`. The tool was **NOT writing** during either corruption event (verified via per-write guards + process logs). It only reads. Mentioning per your docs' warning about third-party tools.
### Asks
1. Confirm whether SC Live 4 firmware [version] is expected to rebuild m.db when reading a Desktop 5.0 library
2. Is there a known-good firmware version that's schema-compatible with Desktop 5.0?
3. Separately: Desktop "Backup Library" backed up my **local** empty library instead of the **SSK** library that was loaded — UX bug worth tracking
