How do you keep the internal SC6000 drive in sync when your library is bigger than the drive?

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
1

Hi all,

I’m looking for the workflow you actually use, because I’ve hit a wall.

My setup: 2x SC6000 + X1850. Library is ~67,000 tracks / ~1.9 TB, managed in Lexicon DJ. The audio lives on two external SSDs that I only use as an archive on my Mac — they never go into a player. I play from the internal SSDs (1 TB and 512 GB) and from USB sticks.

What I do now: Lexicon → Sync → Engine DJ with Target = (Device/USB) and a selection of playlist folders (~7,900 tracks / 220 GB). That loads the drive fine.

The problem: nothing ever gets removed. Lexicon’s “Playlist Sync” only adds and updates. So after cleaning up my library, my player drive still had:

  • database entries whose audio file isn’t on the drive (they show up red inside playlists on the player)
  • orphaned audio files (XXX GB) that no database entry points to — and this grows with every sync

Lexicon’s “Full Sync” isn’t an option: it would try to make the device identical to my whole 1.9 TB library, which obviously doesn’t fit on a 1 TB drive. And the Engine DJ sync screen in Lexicon has no “clean up unused files” option. The reason I am using lexicon DJ is that I don’t want to have a Engine DB on every USB drive/stick i own, but only have my files on it. My dream would be just one DB on my mac.

I never ever put the SSD into a player I only use the internal Sata-SSD or sticks

2

I have an external data base with my tracks, and only export tracks that I need for a certain gig. there is absolutely no need to carry around 67000 tracks. You will never play even 1/4 of it during a single gig.

3

Hmmm, that’s a specific situation. Anyway a few things cross my mind

  • When you install Engine DJ, it will only create an Engine Library on the drives that are connected while you rune Engine DJ.
  • How did those missing and orphaned files came to be? Is this a bug/missing feature in Lexicon, or did other “bad stuff” happen?
  • You could use Engine DJ to curate the target drives themselves, do a relocate there, and so on?
  • If you would slim down to 1 drive, and use the ethernet link, you can work like @NoiseRiser does, and have your main collection on that external drive. You can then orgnise proper backups of said drive, of course…
4

I have kinda the same issue with my workflow from iTunes.

Well at least last time I checked.

If I delete a track (or 10) in iTunes, and update it in Engine, its all good… But when I re-sync my usb, then it takes out the track(s) from the playlist/ collection, but its still present on the drive.

5

It’s my home setup, I play and love to discover old forgotten tracks.

For out of home Gigs a usb stick is a solution yes

6

Yes that is the only way - sync from lexicon to Engine os while all drives are connected.

The disconnect all drives Open engine and run the analysis on engine dj on the internal drive.

BUT

Tracks removed from my Lexikon DJ playlist are not removed from the Internal ssd , that’s how I get them orphan tracks

7

If it’s just for your home setup, play the tunes from Engine DJ computer library and only sync performance tracks to the internal SSD.

8

I hit the same wall with Engine’s one-way sync (add/update, never remove) and eventually stopped fighting it. My workaround: treat the player drive as a disposable cache, not a library. Since your actual library lives in Lexicon and the synced selection is only ~220 GB, you can periodically wipe the Engine library folder on the internal SSD and re-sync the whole selection fresh. That gives you an exact mirror of your current playlists, and every orphan is gone in one step instead of hunting them down.

It feels wasteful the first time, but a monthly clean rebuild takes less time than manually reconciling removals ever did for me. The key is keeping your playlist folder selection in Lexicon stable, so the re-sync is one click, not a re-decision.

9

Verkauf deine DENON Produkte! Größter Mist! Habe den schon 6000 seit 2022 und das billig Ding verliert Farbe auf Knöpfen und startet mittlerweile nicjt mal mehr! Der denon Support ist genau so schlecht wie die Qualität der Produkte!

PIONEER lohnt sich! Denon ist Kinderkram

10

Proof that Germans do have humor. I already knew that von meiner Schwiegermutter!

11

I recently came across space issue where the 2TB Internal SSD was filling and I couldn’t add any additional tracks.

My Engine DJ Desktop Collection was already a subset of all of my tracks, just the tracks I liked enough or felt I’d ever have a chance of mixing. Even so, over time I ran out of room.

Luckily this was soon after Denon released Track Rating, so I re-organized how and where I export.

Now I use the 2TB Internal SSD for “House”, a 1TB USB for “Techno” and another 1TB USB for “Break / Grime” and anything else.

Most critically, I have a Smart Playlist that is called “Bangers”, which is “Any track rated greater than 3 Stars”, so any 4 or 5-Star track. And I make sure that this is exported to the Internal SSD.

This way, over time, I can do finer curation of my tracks using this great feature, and ensure that these tracks are “always available” to me by exporting to the SSD. Maybe that will get larger and I’ll have to pull “House” off and put that on its own 1TB USB or something, but for now it’s a good balance and makes sure that even if somebody else comes over with their USB, and I can’t connect my Techno USB, if they play something Techno I can find one of my favourite tracks.

Otherwise, I think the true solution is “Don’t play in Standalone if you want your full library”. This doesn’t really work for me because I’m typically playing an unplanned set, meaning I heavily rely on Preview, and the latency using this feature when in PC Mode is atrocious.

If it were manageable and more snappy, I could really fall into that workflow, and literally use my PC Collection day-to-day, rate tracks, and then export only “Bangers” or specific planned set playlists to the Internal SSD/USBs…

I’d really like that workflow, as it would save me multiple Exports each day, with painful dialog boxes that make me wait up to five minutes just to click “Okay” so it actually starts the export… while allowing me to explore new tracks but maintain a sane exported collection…

Imagine actually using a seek table…

12

This is true? Engine DJ Desktop always alerts me that missing tracks would be removed…

You saying this entire time I have to wait 5m for that dialog box to pop up, and it wasn’t even removing anything!? WOW.

13

I don’t know if it’s right or not but this is how I do it. Just wipe the drive and export fresh to it