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
Finally getting back to this. Your suggestion, unfortunately, doesn’t work. Engine simply creates a new library on my root/system HD.
When I plug my USB stick into my computer, it says there is “new data to sync”. If I click sync back, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The tracks on my external HD do not have the changes in beat grid or my cue points which were all set on-player.
I assume these changes are going to ghost/nonexistent tracks on the NEW engine library created on my root/system HD.
This is a nightmare. Denon, please fix this.
Literally all of this would be instantly solved if we could set a “master” library location, as one can in Rekordbox, iTunes etc… why so insistent on internal/system drive?
So I think I can help with part 1 of the question. I think you are doing a step wrong. All your music is on your external right? Drive is in ExFat or Fat32 (I don’t have a clue about APFS). Right, so now, click on “Drives” & select your external drive that your music is on from the right side of the window. next click on the “collection” panel underneath your external drive. Then drag all your music - music folder or whatever its called (hopefully it’s all in one main folder to start with) onto the collection pane of that drive.
If you click on the “Collection” down drop you can create playlists by dragging files directly onto a playlist you’ve created in the collection of your external drive. You can even create playlist with the same folder name by just dragging a complete folder in. Analyse your files & you’re done!! The step I think you’re doing wrong is by exporting / syncing - DON’T EXPORT/SYNC. It will create duplicates!! All your music is already on the drive, no need to do anything else. I hope this helps.
IF you made that playlist under the wrong “collection” pane (on the left) then it will do this. In order to avoid this, make sure you select your external drive by clicking on “Drives” at the bottom & selecting your external drive at the top right of the window. Then click on the “collection” downdrop & make playlists there. Also Make sure you add music to the collection from the external drive & not from the computer.
No. DO NOT USE SYNC!! If you followed the steps above you should be good to go. If you use sync after doing the steps above, it will create duplicates on your external. If you use Sync & you created playlists under the wrong “collection” panel (on the left) it will duplicate all that music from your external onto your computer.
There is a lot of confusion with regards to the way Engine works. This is (mainly) because Denon has not given us the option to select where our “Master” database resides and partly due to an unintuitive user interface. I’m gonna “try” explain it a bit better. For most people, they will have all their music on the computer. This would be the collection pane on the far left.
They will plug in an external drive, drag & drop the music they want onto that drive, use sync manager & export. Doing this copies all the selected music to the external drive. Some of us don’t use our laptops for music storage, we use an external drive. So therefore we need to use a different “Collection”. This is done by clicking on the “Drives” icon at the bottom of the panel & selecting our external drive at the top right.
Here we add all our music from our external drive to our collection. Once you’ve added all your music, created playlists & analysed etc…(FROM THAT SPECIFIC DRIVE!!) You are done! There is no need to export, because all your music is already on that drive. If you do decide you want export, Engine will create duplicates on that drive in a separate music folder with lots of sub folders inside of it. Now… when it comes to grid edits that you’ve done on your prime hardware. If you have your collection on an external drive, all the edits should automatically show up when you click on the external drive because Engine OS has already saved that info to the database on your external. Basically there’s nothing to do, so why do you want to use sync? If your master collection is on the pc, then obviously you need to use sync to get that info from the drive onto the computer. I hope this all makes sense & helps some of you.
I think I’ve got a system working. Basically avoid touching the main Collection area, just do everything in “Drives”
Another thing to note to anyone else reading, is if you’re doing this, make sure any new Playlists you make on Engine DJ you make in the “Drives” section as above. I made one in ‘Collection’ and couldn’t delete anything from it, playlists behaves correctly if all work is done in Drive though
Hey @crazycraig thanks for that, however I am already doing this. I create and manage playlists and import all music through Drives > My External Drive. I shouldn’t have to do this, but for now I get it and have been doing this.
The problem is that when I use Sync Manager to create a USB stick, bring that to my SC6000 players, make changes to beat grid or set cue points on player, return to my PC and put the stick in, Sync Manger will not import any of those changes. Presumably because there’s nothing in my internal hard drive - still the location of the master library database. Engine basically considers my external USB hard drive and my USB stick the same thing.
Denon, this behavior absolutely must change.
This is what I was trying to explain, if your main collection of music is on your external drive. Where are you trying to sync those changes to? The music & database with all the grid edits etc… are already on that drive. There’s no point in using sync manager. I have multiple external drives & in my “music” folder on my laptop I have an Engine Library for each drive, just named accordingly. Eg: Engine Library1 - Sandisk; Engine Library2 - Verbatim, Engine Library3 - Voyager. Each time before I use one of those drives, I edit the name for that drive to just “Engine Library”. When Im done, I rename it again. It’s a PITA!! But it works for me.
