Seriously this is so crazy how slow engineDJ is with an external drive, should I just manage in rekordbox free if I’m simply trying to manage music onto a standalone? It seemed much faster …
I have no problem with external SSDs with my P4 it’s instantaneous! On the other hand, actually I don’t have 400gb of audio file, which is ridiculous but that’s just my opinion! “Knowing that in one evening we do not play more than 120 or even 150 titles!”
It is enough that the quality of certain stored files is random depending on their origin, it can also slow down the loading of files as well as the associated information.
And it is recommended in order to have the best performances… not to install a storage medium of more than 1to.
We must favor the Exfat MBR format because it is universal!
The OP is right. It should be as easy to manage the library on removeable media as it is with an internal drive. Should not have to write back to the computer’s internal drive when you only want to mange the library on the removable drive.
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djmel, Having all of your music files in your in your drive whether it’d be 400gb or more is nice to have rather than being sorry when it comes to requests. because the guy may have a generous gratuity for his request and i dont wanna be like “sorry man I dont have that song”
Now the other question I have is can the drive I use with my prime go be formatted in APFS as well instead of the exFAT or mos-dos?
There are plenty of workarounds, connection via a smartphone or computer via youtube or other such as streaming platforms.
I had more than 9500/10000 titles and unfortunately it’s often the same titles that come back and therefore I did some sorting!
But I always stock them on a medium just in case and I obviously regularly renew the titles and they are all classified by genre, then artist and best in relation to the years of release.
Currently I still have 8000 titles left but if we prepare an evening correctly with 200/300 in case that is more than enough, especially when the interviews with my clients are precise in terms of their musical tastes with a list of titles which are essential to them and which allows to know their musical styles and I also ask them the titles or artist or see kind not to pass in the evening as a blacklist.
For each evening I provide a personalized form for the event that simplifies the evening and yet I do not work at all with playlists, I just learn to know my customers and also their guests with relevant and useful questions.
Everyone has their own way of preparing their evenings!
Exfat ! 
Same with USB key, SSD internal or external…:
No! The drive you use on the denon/engine players has to be ex-FAT or Fat32
That depends on what you are trying to achieve. I have always used external drives to store my DJ music library and playback from it. The drives are always formatted for Mac. Initially HFS, now I’m APFS.
ok thanks for the info.
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I appreciate the answers and suggestions so far, but there have still be no answers to my questions:
-
How do I set an external drive as the primary and only location of my Engine library? Similar to how almost all other library management apps work including Rekordbox. So far all I see is alternative workflows to essentially what I’m already doing now. I do not want a library on my internal SSD.
-
How can I bring in edits to beatgrid, cue points etc made ON-player back to my library that I manually maintain on my external? This used to work prior to the Engine update that removed “crates” a while back.
My assumption is that the reason #2 doesn’t work is because #1 isn’t possible. My fear right now is that a ton of edits and cues I’ve made to music on my USB from my SC6000 players is now lost forever because there is “no new data” to import according to Engine Desktop Sync Manager even though I know that there is — because from Engine Desktop’s perspective the music files on my USB don’t exist in the empty “library” on my Mac’s internal SSD.
If someone at Denon sees this, please assist or at least acknowledge there is an issue.
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Look at my SYNCH MANAGER - HOW DOES IT WORK post in the forum and at the end of the thread you will find the solution… Hope this help… CIAO
You don’t need to do anything special
- Usb external with all your files
- Connect it to laptop
- Start engine dj
- Add songs from that external ssd to engine collection
That’s it
That drive is the collection drive.
Engine will create a database folder on the drive to reference it.
Engine creates another folder in internal computer drive by default but that will not contain anything
If you compare the two Engine Libary folders you will find that the one on the external is larger in size.
If you unplug the drive from computer and start up engine dj, you will find an empty collection.
There is no gymnastics or workarounds involved.
- External SSD connected
- Launch Engine DJ
- Export test playlist to another usb/sd card
- Eject usb/sd card
- Insert usb to engine device
- Add some hotcues to tracks on device
- Eject usb/sd card from player
- Connect usb/sd card to laptop
- Enter sync manager
- It should show new data available to sync back to collection (external ssd)
- Do that.
- That’s it
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for some reason Denon though it would be useful to have multiple library loaded at the same time “merged” when it would have been much simpler to support only “one drive” per source on the right (as in itune, rekord, etc).
Oh btw, EngineDJ won’t so any backup on your external drive, so you should get the habit of doing backup manually (copy/paste db files) from time to time.
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Both method will have limitations.
As a long term serato user, I’m used to having separate database per drive.
Makes it easy for me to move between computers.
I have gone to gigs where I plug my drive to another djs computer, both djs play from the same computer with our two libraries merged.
Yeah this one is a glaring omission. I wonder if there is a feature request for this.
It should, yes. It does not. That’s my major issue right now. I’m about to lose all these corrected beatgrids and cues. I am on step 10 of this list exactly as you described and it says no new data.
I’m confident the reasons is because my internal drive has zero tracks, they’re all on my external only.
This is a huge problem. This is a bug, not a feature.
Did you try with a new database?
Rename the internal engine folder to something else
Rename the SSD engine folder
Updates? How did you get on?
You don’t need to do anything special
- Usb external with all your files
- Connect it to laptop
- Start engine dj
- Add songs from that external ssd to engine collection
That’s it
I’m having the same issue having just joined the denon ecosystem. I don’t want a specific computer to be my DJ one (hence getting a laptop-less controller), I want the whole database, playlists, music etc to be on my External HD, so i can plug it into any computer with Engine DJ on to sort through songs, make playlists etc and if i make new loops/cues while djing, they’re just there when i next plug the hd into a computer with engine dj on.
It seemed to have been working following your steps until i made a playlist on one of my laptops, and that playlist only exists on Engine DJ on that one computer, it didnt create it on my Ext HD…
Engine creates another folder in internal computer drive by default but that will not contain anything
Apparently it does: any playlists you made using that computer, despite all the music being on the SSD.
So do I have to sync a playlist made on a computer back to to the Ext HD with the music on every time i make one? When i do, it tells me there’s 96gb of data to transfer, how can that be possible if all the music is already on that Ext HD, is it going to duplicate everything if i do it?
Denon really have made a mess of this. I originally tried the ‘everything on a computer and sync’ like denon want you to to, but kept getting warnings about songs will be deleted when trying to sync stuff. Or i’d make a playlist, change the order of a few songs and when pushing sync, it wanted to sync 100’s of GBs of data, why for esentially some text? its so clunky and unituitive. Real let down after using Traktor for so many years.
If anyone knows how to disable the pc’s copy of the library (would making a symlink back to the ext hd library work so it actually makes the changes on that?) I’d be greatful. I want to work more efficiently, its not a 2001 iPod, its thousands of pounds of DJ gear
I wont mention the fact I had to make a python script to relocate files as their new feature literally doesnt find anything i can see infront of me in explorer
I will check again on my end.
The way I explained it should be correct except something has changed recently
I think if i expand “Drives” and make sure i make the playlist there (counter-intuatively ignoring ‘Engine Library’), i think its making it directly on the HD.
But even worse, I’ve noticed today, when manually relocating a couple of files individually with the Egnine DJ right-click (by finding it on the connected hard drive that auto-relocate is supposed to find tracks on but doesnt), it does re-link it, but it also disappears from playlists it was in, and just moves to the main collection!
So I have to remember what playlist(s) it was in and re-add them! What a mess
I’m going to have to start again by organising as best I can on Traktor before i start using this for gigs, i’ve no idea what tracks are still in playlists, missing, which playlists are on the HD, which are on one of the 3 computers 
jesus christ denon
You may want to try a brand new Engine database