EngineDJ Desktop - directory path varies per record

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
1

I’ve noticed something odd in my Engine DJ library. Some tracks show their actual directory, while others point to the Engine PRIME Favorites directory, even though the files are stored in the same music library.

For example, some tracks show:

%USERPROFILE%\Music\dj\...

While others show:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\AIR Music Technology\EnginePrime\Favorites\Music\...

I’ve confirmed that Favorites\Music is a Windows junction pointing to %USERPROFILE%\Music, so both paths ultimately lead to the same location.

What I’m trying to understand is why Engine DJ uses both paths within the same collection.

  • Is this related to how the tracks were originally imported, or has the behavior changed between different Engine PRIME / Engine DJ versions?
  • Does Engine DJ store the original import path rather than resolving it to the actual destination?
  • Could having different paths to the same files cause issues with duplicate tracks, relocation or external library management tools?

I’m particularly curious whether this is intentional behavior, a legacy implementation or something that has changed over time.

Has anyone else noticed this in their collection?

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2

How do you add music to your library? Do you drag and drop from an Explorer window or are you importing stuff from other DJ software databases?

3

Via Windows Explorer. I checked influence of any (limited) testd with third party apps, but cannot relate those to the libraries state. My current thought is that somehow I managed to import from windows folders/music in a different way and that resulted in the different directory string in the db. I do note that it seems driven by two points in time. Initial import in the 1.5 version and a second import in 4.x range.

4

Might be worth reading the release notes of desktop version 2.0.0 about the DB changes. I believe this was the version that changed crates into playlists? (but my be wrong)

Desktop and OS Downloads + Manuals | Engine DJ

I think there may have even been another DB change around version 3 too, but the release notes have all been removed now.

5

yes this is the case given the path constraint on the Track table

	CONSTRAINT C_path UNIQUE (path),

What I’m confused about is why the location is within your %appdata% directory at all.

I just installed Engine 5.1 on my Windows streaming box, added some songs and the path is absolutely as I would expect. Engine’s been recording paths this way for at least 3 or 4 years now.

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