Getting back to this topic, which I know have been discussed several times already, but I did not see any for 2024, so here it goes!
I use Engine DJ for Mac OS (latest version on both) and I have a bunch of music which I have saved on my external LaCie rugged hard drives (because storage is limited on my laptop and its a Mac, lol).
I use SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.2 64GB Flash Drive to play on Denon Gear, which has been working well to export songs etc. HOWEVER, I do not know if it’s the latest update or whatever it is, but when making any changes, syncing USBs with “Sync Manager”, it take AAAGES! On one USB I was removing and replacing playlists from using Sync Manager (not even 50% of the storage, so about 30GB) and it took for me over 1 hour.
This is not acceptable as I have to make quick changes to playlist, upload music quickly to USB Flash drives to be ready to play my sets and adapting to the environment I’m playing in. I have 5 of these badboy USBs and they go with me everywhere I play to have backups of backups and also different playlist in them etc…
So my question is: is there a fix to the slow export issue? I do not want to move to SSD, because I change Denon gear and travel often depending on where I’m playing. USB should be working as it does with Pioneer gear, am I right?
I was reading you can use the “drag and drop” function instead of using “Sync Manager” but this workflow gets easily confused which drive you are in, what you are removing from where and is not really a workflow that would make my life any easier.
Engine is not slow from my experience. I get +300 MB/s (megabytes) when I export. There is no software related reason for engine DJ to be slow.
I would look at your usb interfaces and ensure they are not the bottleneck.
Also, even though a USB thumb drive is listed usb interface speed, that is often a “burst” speed (small bit of data to fill the internal fast buffer), and sustained writes are often much slower. This can often be the case when you have a tiny drive like this that will throttle due to heat.
The heat thing is a great point, i updated from Rekordbox last Friday onto a 128gb USB and it was almost too hot to touch.
My only issue with DJ software is its far far slower than just loading 30gb of music to a drive using finder or WIndows explorer to do the same, with no logical reason as to why.
Edit: in fact loading my entire collection to my NAS drive over wifi in our house was faster than Engine and RB.
Thanks for the comments, Yea, the form factor can definitely be the issue. I will try SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe as recommended from DJ Deep Bhamra on YouTube video as it would fit me perfectly and get rid of all dongles and just use the USB stick.
Are you using separate USB connections for the drives? Otherwise you may be doing a copy to and from using the same bandwidth almost 3 times more then needed…
Agreed heat slow USB drives down also the drive will have a buffer on it - once that’s full - things can get really slow…
Yes, I use one port which is dedicated for the external hard drive and one for the USB. I just ordered 2 of the 128 GB Dual Drive Luxe to see if they will be any better crossing fingers.
It gets more complicated, depending on the computer. Some have multiple ports that share the same USB controller. One would have to ensure that each port used would use different controllers to get the best speeds possible.
Something that I experienced with the heat as well. Doesn’t matter if recordbox or engine dj. If I transfer higher data amounts, the usb stick gets extrem hot and the data transfer speed drops. I do use some cool packs or fans and it gets better
Yeah, you should be fine. It’s not the connection (USBC) that you need to think about, it’s the connection type + protocol. This stuff is super confusing thanks to the body that regulates USB protocol names.
I guess the other ‘obvious’ solution is to not get hung up on missing tracks for a gig and just work with the ones you already have. In 20+ yrs of gigging I’ve learnt that you already have enough fantastic music to perform without fretting over a few more that can be added when you have more time.
Or just add the new ones to a separate stick as there are plenty of ports on our devices to connect to.
Yeah I have been looking in to Lexicon as well. It seems very cool. On top of the export issue, I keep getting tracks going red and missing, sometime its the Apple Music but recently also other folders, even though I haven’t touched them and constantly have to re-locate the songs. I think Lexicon would be the savour in this case.
Thanks for the tip man! I purchased it some time ago and could download it again with the latest version. used it and I think it did the trick with the missing files!
I just did a sync + export of new files to my SC6000Ms with internal SSDs and am getting >350MB/s. The limitation seems to be the USB3.0 controller on the media player, not my internal SSDs (Samsung 850EVO, ~550MB/s read/write).
