Confused with Engine Prime software (on Windows)

[delange]

Hello everyone,

New Prime users here. To be honest, my Prime 2 hasn’t arrived yet but I downloaded the Prime Engine software to get started sorting my music for the player when it arrives. The Prime 2 will be replacing an HD2500 (which still works fine).

A bit of background: I intend to have a 1TB SSD drive that I’ll use on the Prime 2 (maybe even inside the unit, not sure yet). I will also have a backup drive, for backup reasons (obviously ). My main music catalog resides on my NAS at home. It is a collection of WAV and Apple Lossless files.

I first tried to copy a few WAV file to my SSD drive. Engine picks those files up but apparently isn’t able to read the metadata inside the files. That’s a bummer since that works fine on the HD2500.

So next I tried using the Apple Sync thing. Engine reads the iTunes XML file. It took a while before it went through the 20k or so files but it did that fine. However, Engine doesn’t seem to analyze the files. The Job Monitor seems to execute some things from time to time but not a single file got analyzed. Internet search to the rescue and there are quite quite a few Youtube videos saying that the Apple integration doesn’t work very well. But I’m interested to know if I am doing something wrong or am I expecting something wrong? Anyway, onto the next try.

I was very opposed to this step but in the end I decided to give it a try: convert my music files to mp3’s (brrr chills running over my back). As a test I converted a bunch of music files to mp3 and copied them on my SSD drive. In Engine I dragger the files from my SSD into Engine and sure enough they all appeared and got analyzed. A first question I have is: is this the right way of using Engine (it is not very clear in the manual).

Secondly, how do I go about creating a backup drive; can I just copy the entire content of the SSD drive onto a new (backup) drive?

Sorry for the long post

[DjAj]

@delange

I intend to have a 1TB SSD drive that I’ll use on the Prime 2 (maybe even inside the unit, not sure yet).

I would ask you this question: is your computer close to the console? Since to transfer the tracks from the computer to the console you are obliged to connect the two objects with the blue USB cable. There is no other method (for now).

@delange

In Engine I dragger the files from my SSD into Engine and sure enough they all appeared and got analyzed. A first question I have is: is this the right way of using Engine (it is not very clear in the manual).

Let’s say that the manual does not talk about this topic because everyone does what he wants. There are other guys here on the forum who manage the library in different ways. I have the main collection on the internal SSD of my Desktop PC (therefore fixed PC) in which I installed Engine DJ. Then I use an SDXC card or a USB stick to create playlists for use on the console. So my exports are always light because I only export the tracks I need for that particular event.

[delange]

@DjAj

I would ask you this question: is your computer close to the console? Since to transfer the tracks from the computer to the console you are obliged to connect the two objects with the blue USB cable. There is no other method (for now).

I don’t have my Prime 2 yet. I’m currently just preparing my SSD to be used with the Prime 2. Currently I manually copied my music files from my NAS to the SSD.

@DjAj

Let’s say that the manual does not talk about this topic because everyone does what he wants. There are other guys here on the forum who manage the library in different ways. I have the main collection on the internal SSD of my Desktop PC (therefore fixed PC) in which I installed Engine DJ. Then I use an SDXC card or a USB stick to create playlists for use on the console. So my exports are always light because I only export the tracks I need for that particular event.

I see. That will be different in my case. I’m a mobile DJ and I need my entire music collection with me all the time. I won’t be using USB sticks or memory cards.