As an option for your workflow, I’d put everything primarily on the Prime4 SSD. For managing and updating playlists, you’d need the computer mode and a pc. Manual backups etc. It doesn’t solve wifi issues or Spotify use, but it removes sync and database dupes.
Also 200GB for 5000 tracks is normal if you use FLAC or WAV files without stems; not anything Engine can do about that. An MP3 size increases to about 5x using stems (original file plus 4 stems). So about 30MB per track which would result in 150GB as well.
Off-topic Pioneer remark: At least your topic isn’t removed here. But maybe you never need their forum, as everything works “flawless” of course.
I think you can downgrade your Prime to 4.2 and keep Engine 4.3 as your desktop software for managing your library.
I’m speaking under the supervision of other forum members, but I don’t think this should be a problem, given that the database between 4.2 and 4.3 uses the same format.
Hear hear ! The guys had enough attention and won’t last long. Although he’s helped by offering himself up as another reason why the forum anti-bump feature should be turned back on
This makes sense, as the stem file probably is just a proprietary multi-track audio file of some sort.
Yesterday, I got some two 1TB WD Blue SSDs which are blazingly fast in a proper enclosure (proper unpaid recommendation here). I have two different collections on two computers. One Thinkpad and another tower, which does the heavy processing of the stems. Trying to sync them actually is impossible. I plug one SSD into my tower, sync the internal collection to my SSD - plug this exact SSD into my Laptop, and it says there is nothing to sync back. Looking into the engine folder, there are only 160 stem files on my SSD. What do I do wrong?
I think maybe you misunderstand how sync works. When you sync data from a primary source (your tower) to a performance volume (one of your SSDs), it’s a one way data transfer from the music perspective. You cannot take that performance volume and sync to another host (your laptop). It simply doesn’t work like you’re thinking it does.
Syncing from a perfomrance volume to a host computer’s database is only for loops, beat grids, cues and perhaps some playlist changes.
Rekordbox is the absolute worst “paid” eco system of them all… Plus don’t expect any forum support from Pioneer (or whatever foolish name they want to go by these days).. lol
Ok Joel. You are frustrated. So I’ll try to be constructive.
Not sure what you mean by wi-fi sync. Do you mean wi-fi streaming?
Database size, you don’t have to use lossless files, you can shrink the database files by using third party software to convert to 320bps MP3 or similar and no-one will notice (honestly).
Your core database should live on your PC and you sync just the files you need for a gig to a removable drive. That keeps your gig database neat and searching is faster.
If you need to keep your core database synced between laptops use something designed for that like FolderSync2 (on a mac). I do.
Weirdness like usb sticks not working point to a corrupt file system or corrupt database. I have nothing good to say about Sandisk USB sticks. They run hotter than the sun, have rotten write speeds and are not particularly reliable in my experience. Other brands are no different. I’ve had better reliability and speeds from SD cards (even Sandisk brand). YMMV.
This isn’t Engine specific but more general advice for using databases on removable drives. You should regularly run an operating system disk consistency check both the core database drive and the USB stick. If I see problems, I usually reformat the removable drive and re-sync to it. I do this with Rekordbox too. You might want to try that.
Nearly forgot. Keep backups of everything. More than one.
If you use this, Folder Sync 2 | Destek make sure you know the difference between mirror and sync.
I think at least part of why this happens is the endless writing of stuff onto the Engine database & library folder by Engine OS, actually, and not as much a deficiency of Engine DJ desktop itself, though I won’t argue that Engine DJ desktop app needs continued improvement. This issue I suspect is the root of much of these problems might even eventually mess up the drive table or cause drive data corruption in the worst cases… I wouldn’t be surprised. If there was a read-only mode on the players or some sort of flag you could add to a drive using Engine DJ desktop to prevent drives from being altered, then I bet much of these quirks and eventual failures of an Engine database library on a drive would not happen.
You’ll also notice that DJing using an online streaming service with the Denon DJ Prime player separates (and presumably all-in-one consoles) is vastly improved when either you have a spare, originally analyzed database library without all the glut added through these many writes, or, better yet, if you are using a streaming service without a write-allowable drive active – then the downloading and using the streaming service tracks seems to work better, too. I find that no matter what, if I use a drive shared across the local Prime Engine Connect network or I’m keeping that drive active as the storage for DJing from a streaming service, then eventually streaming services become unreliable, the Engine network between the players sharing the drive starts acting up, and eventually the drive itself doesn’t work consistently even just on the player it’s directly connected… until of course I eject the drive when using the streaming service, wipe the library database and start over later, and/or copy a backup of the fresh Engine folder back onto the drive again to revert it to something fast & stable.
You might also want to try using streaming services on Prime without an active drive (it will give you a message warning you nothing will be saved) or at least having a drive either with no tracks on it or one with just a few tracks and you don’t mind if it gets corrupted. No drive seems more reliable and faster than a dedicated streaming cue point drive, though. Until 1) read-only option is worked into Engine OS/DJ, or 2) the Engine library & database is eventually drastically improved to prevent these issues (don’t hold your breath), perhaps an even easier thing to implement than #1 would be the ability to refresh the drive reading on the players with an on-screen button in settings/options after all the drives have been ejected; that way you don’t have to physically disconnect the drive and reconnect it to use any tracks off the drives that cannot be made read-only when switching between streaming service and your drives.
I’m not sure why anyone would complain about a couple hundred gigs of size for any of their media files. A 1 TB SD card is $100. Snag a couple so that you have some redundancy, and go about your day. That’s about as cheap as the hand truck you’d need to haul in your record collection otherwise. Lossless is a good thing, and any professional should be using it whenever possible.
Actually, by using MP3s, you can hold more tracks on any storage medium, meaning that your Database will potentially be larger. I think you meant to express that you can fit more tracks on a USB if they are MP3s, which is true, but the database size will not be different if you have the same number of tracks, even if you go from FLAC->MP3.
As a Denon FanBoi I use both ecosystems but one thing I have experienced is that when I post a question in the forum it’s like shouting in the wind.
That said - it’s probably because their (AT) forum doesn’t work. I found a solution to my issue and can no longer add my findings to help anyone else - stuck in a log in loop!
Never understood how people managed to get duplicates of files with engine DJ.
My workflow is even more convoluted due to using Rekordbox as my main library, with all music files on SSD A. I use Denon conversion utility to duplicate my rekordbox structure into engine DJ, on a separate SSD (B).
Now that my main Engine collection is on SSD B, as long as that is plugged in, I can plug in other storage media to sync playlists to.
I too used to have a prime 4+ and (still have) prime go+ combo, and I play out on pioneer gear a lot, so I swapped out the prime 4 for a flx10 because for 4 deck practice I’m okay with laptop DJing at home.
I’d assume most people aren’t doing what I’m doing with the rekordbox as a main library, but I feel engineDJs export process is the same as pioneers = One main collection, and sync to other storage media, with the ability to sync back updated cues etc.
Oh man, there are plenty of ways. I manually enter files into Engine – I don’t use any other DJ software to organize my music.
Here’s what I’ve run into:
Sometimes Songs are released multiple times with slight variations in file names.
Order of the artists change
Someone entering file names didn’t enter the file name properly across multiple re-releases. I’ve seen the ampersand (&) being written as and in some cases, or even single quotes (') missing .
Downloading the exact same song from multiple sources, but in different formats. (This shows as the exact same file for people who aren’t keen to notice the difference)
Same song re-released at different times. I organize files by Source > Date Acquired > Genre, so I sometimes download or buy the same song more than once if I don’t manually check my collection.
Same song re-released at a different time with different artwork.
Same song re-released with the mix name different, but the same song file is the same:
Artist Name - Song Name (Extended).mp3
Artist Name - Song Name (Extended Mix).mp3
Artist Name - Song Name (extended mix).mp3
There are a few more iterations of this that I’m not remembering at this time.
All of that said, it’s impossible to enter the exact same song (File Name in a particular directory) in the same playlist due to the constraint in that table.
And thats even only duplicated through “normal management”.
There are also a lot of people who dont exactly understand how engine works. You could for example copy a MP3 file to external storage, and your local library, both add them to Engine DJ, and then do a sync from local Engine DJ to the external storage. There you have your duplicate, through “mismanagement”
Threads and discussions like this are a large part of the reason this forum is pretty much dead these days. You’d be lucky if 1 in every 100 posts is worth reading now, a massive yawnfest.
Some people run into problems when they dont want Engine to handle the files management for their performance drive, and i think its majority of the Virtual DJ guys that are used to playing from File System folders.
your workflow is similar to mine
music is on t7 SSD
serato for library management
lexicon dj to convert the serato library & crates to engine dj library
engine dj to export the library via sync manager to t3 ssd for use with the players
Works fine for me, all my tracks are labelled and contain mytags to help me find the next random track quickly - open format quick mixing.
Combine that with the inherent lack of features of Engine compared to DJ software (esp VDJ) and you have people posting threads like this and throwing their toys out of the pram.
How does that saying goes…“Never judge a dog (fish?) based on it’s ability to climb a tree…”
Sounds some professional DJ cannot distinguish between a dog and a cat, just saying
It’s a little bit more complex than that. It’s like saying FileMaker Pro is a bad database because it didn’t implement SQL query from the start. FileMaker is a different thing than MySQL, and trying to think SQL WILL get you stuck.
Same goes for Engine and Virtual DJ. Engine has a way of doing things. If you stick to it it works fine.
That said:
there are still a lot of quality of life features missing in the database management. (But don’t overrate a relocate function, I see a lot of users abusing such a function to make up for bad management practices)
my 12 year old daughter starts to have a pretty good music taste. I want to teach hear how to manage a library and start DJing. Well, suddenly you are confronted with a Spotify-generation that doesn’t know much of file management (nowadays a OS tries to present stuff filesystem-agnostic). Now if I would have thought her Traktor, Virtual DJ or anything else, the same problem would have been posed. But it turns out that there definitely is a steep, archaic, learning curve for managing DJ libraries. For myself, having grown up with MS-DOS this isn’t a problem, but for those youngsters, it is… A more basic solution would be welcome, but that would involve copying everything into Engines own folder structure, something a lot of people DONT want for some dark reason…
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