iTunes slow on new Retina iMac

[Keithb1498576217]

Hi,

 

I have been running my fairly large iTunes library on an 27" iMac for many years few issues but have just upgraded my computer to a new Retina iMac and am finding that importing tracks to iTunes is taking much longer than it used to on my old computer.

 

The library is installed locally on Flash storage (the previous one was on an SSD) with the media being stored on an external Lacie 6TB Thunderbolt 2 HD. The media was also used from this drive when using the previous machine.

 

The previous machine was a 3.4 Ghz machine with 16GB, & 256GB SSD drive. The new machine is a 4Ghz, 16GB machine with 500GB Flash storage.

 

Drives are the same. Except I also have two other drives attached (a Drobo and 1TB Lacie) which were previously Firewire 800 but are now using USB (2), However I am not storing anything related to iTunes on these.

 

Even just adding 10 mp3's is incredibly slow causing the spring disk for at least 30 secs to 1 minute.

 

Any thoughts why its so slow. I obviously expected far better performance from such a highly speced machine.

 

Thanks for any advise.

 

Keith

[kirkmc]

Do you have the external drives set to spin down? Are they spinning up when you try to add files to iTunes? Or does this slowness happen every time?

 

How many tracks in your library?

[Keithb1498576217]

I do have the my power settings set to put drives to sleep when possible BUT I am actually playing iTunes when trying to import. Playing generally continues but importing takes an age.

 

Library is 650GB 63,849 songs plus other stuff. Bu this hasn't increased from previous machine.

[kirkmc]

When you say import, do you mean that you're adding files to iTunes, or ripping CDs? I always get the beachball when ripping CDs at the end of each file as it's being written from the temporary file. My library is just a bit larger than yours.

[Keithb1498576217]

I mean just importing mp3 not ripping a CD. So for instance adding 10 mp3's which are stored on my flash storage takes about 30 secs - 1min before they begin to appear in iTunes. This is long enough for CleanMyMac3 to ask if I want to close the unresponsive iTunes. However, music is being played at the time in iTunes.

 

The fact that media is being played demonstrates that the drive has already spun up.

[kirkmc]

Right, I see that too, and it's been that way for a while. I'm not sure if iTunes is actually unresponsive, or if iTunes sort of puts itself on hold while it's writing the files. When you rip a CD, iTunes puts the data in a temporary location until it reaches the end of the file, then writes it in the iTunes Media folder. So there's a bit of a lag while it's writing the data. If you store your music on an SSD, you probably shouldn't see any delay. I have stored my media on an external hard drive since forever, so I think that could be part of the issue. But, again, it might be something protective, to make sure it can write the file without being disturbed. Just a guess...

[Keithb1498576217]

Kirk, I get what your saying BUT this seems to be much much slower on my new iMac with the library and media stored in same locations. I guess I'll have to live with it, just seems weird to me.

[Otto Nikolaus]

Hi,

 

I have been running my fairly large iTunes library on an 27" iMac for many years few issues but have just upgraded my computer to a new Retina iMac and am finding that importing tracks to iTunes is taking much longer than it used to on my old computer.

 

The library is installed locally on Flash storage (the previous one was on an SSD) with the media being stored on an external Lacie 6TB Thunderbolt 2 HD. The media was also used from this drive when using the previous machine.

 

The previous machine was a 3.4 Ghz machine with 16GB, & 256GB SSD drive. The new machine is a 4Ghz, 16GB machine with 500GB Flash storage.

 

Drives are the same. Except I also have two other drives attached (a Drobo and 1TB Lacie) which were previously Firewire 800 but are now using USB (2), However I am not storing anything related to iTunes on these.

 

Even just adding 10 mp3's is incredibly slow causing the spring disk for at least 30 secs to 1 minute.

 

Any thoughts why its so slow. I obviously expected far better performance from such a highly speced machine.

 

Thanks for any advise.

 

Keith

If these MP3s are already on your Mac's internal drive, adding them to iTunes should be almost instantaneous. OK, the external drive is the bottleneck but you should still be getting something like 100 MB/s copying from internal flash over TB to external.

 

Is the Mac slow doing other things, or just in using the Lacie?

[Keithb1498576217]

If these MP3s are already on your Mac's internal drive, adding them to iTunes should be almost instantaneous. OK, the external drive is the bottleneck but you should still be getting something like 100 MB/s copying from internal flash over TB to external.

 

Is the Mac slow doing other things, or just in using the Lacie?

 

In general operation the Lacie is fine, the only performance issue seems to be in iTunes itself. As Kirk mentioned previously I suspect the issue is that iTunes seems to be creating a new iTunes library file each time with mine being around 135MB.

[Otto Nikolaus]

In general operation the Lacie is fine, the only performance issue seems to be in iTunes itself. As Kirk mentioned previously I suspect the issue is that iTunes seems to be creating a new iTunes library file each time with mine being around 135MB.

Unless I misread, I thought Kirk was referring to temp files created when ripping CDs, not the iTunes Library.itl file. iTunes only needs to update the library file when adding media files. If it's recreating it each time, that would happen to all of us, wouldn't it? When was yours created? 135 MB seems a lot. Mine is 8.1 MB for around 17,000 songs. Pro-rata, I'd expect yours to be more like 30 MB.

[Keithb1498576217]

Sorry I think your right, I don't think my file is actually being recreated though it is being updated constantly (at least on opening and closing).

 

Actually the file size I referred to turned out to be the XML file. My actual .itl file is 31MB which is pretty much what you expected.

[kirkmc]

The XML file isn't updated immediately. I think iTunes waits until it's not doing anything important. The Library file is, however, but that's much smaller.

[Keithb1498576217]

From what I observed they were both being updated at same time. However, from what I understand the XML is no longer needed in iTunes 12 except for sharing with 3rd party apps. So, I've turned this off for now, though its made no difference to my issue.

 

I have done some disk benchmarking and I'm getting speeds of unto 176MB read and wright on my external drive so this clearly isn't the issue, it must be iTunes specific, but I just don't get why it takes so long.

[Otto Nikolaus]

Sorry I think your right, I don't think my file is actually being recreated though it is being updated constantly (at least on opening and closing).

 

Actually the file size I referred to turned out to be the XML file. My actual .itl file is 31MB which is pretty much what you expected.

Yes, I phrased that badly. I meant that the file gets updated, *not* recreated. I think this happens even it you don't add any media, because there's always other info in there that changes each time iTunes is run.

[Otto Nikolaus]

From what I observed they were both being updated at same time. However, from what I understand the XML is no longer needed in iTunes 12 except for sharing with 3rd party apps. So, I've turned this off for now, though its made no difference to my issue.

I've just checked and my ITL and XML files have the same Modified and Last Opened timestamps. As you say, the XML file is not required, but you might want to keep it as the ITL file can be recreated from it if the worst happens.

 

I have done some disk benchmarking and I'm getting speeds of unto 176MB read and wright on my external drive so this clearly isn't the issue, it must be iTunes specific, but I just don't get why it takes so long.

I don't know why this would be. Is the external being accessed by something else like Time Machine or Spotlight? If you close iTunes can you eject it?

 

I'd like to try a comparison. How big are the 10 (or so) MP3 files?

[Keithb1498576217]

I've just checked and my ITL and XML files have the same Modified and Last Opened timestamps. As you say, the XML file is not required, but you might want to keep it as the ITL file can be recreated from it if the worst happens.

 

Ah, OK. As this doesn't really seem to make a difference in terms of performance I'll revert to creating the XML.

 

 

I don't know why this would be. Is the external being accessed by something else like Time Machine or Spotlight? If you close iTunes can you eject it?

 

 

I'd like to try a comparison. How big are the 10 (or so) MP3 files?

 

I certainly can't say its never being used but I've added a lot of files over the last few days and the speed is consistently bad even when the disk is otherwise idle (apart from playing music). There were instances while I was doing the speed check that music would stop playing for 10-20 secs, presumably because of the disk being throttled.

 

I am not currently near it to try ejecting.

 

File size were just typical mp3 files at between 192 & 256 so probably around 4 to 5MB per file.

 

Thanks for taking the time to do a comparison.

[kirkmc]

Do you have lots of smart playlists set to live update? That slows things up considerably. Have you added a lot of smart playlists recently? Remember, every time a track is added to iTunes, all those playlists have to recalculate.

[Keithb1498576217]

Depends what you call a lot. I have about 45 smart playlists and I'm pretty sure all are live updating.

 

However, I want to state again that I believe I have noticed a significant difference after changing computers.

[kirkmc]

I wouldn't call that a lot.

 

Is iCloud Music Library active?

[Keithb1498576217]

No I don't currently use either Apple Music or iTunes Match (though I think I just learned that the limit is now raised to 100,000 songs so I may do soon).

[Keithb1498576217]

Also noticing that Scripts are running very slow too. Its taking minutes just to populate track numbers.

 

Could this all be due to me copying all my iTunes files (not media) from one mac to another?

[Otto Nikolaus]

Ah, OK. As this doesn't really seem to make a difference in terms of performance I'll revert to creating the XML.

 

 

 

 

I certainly can't say its never being used but I've added a lot of files over the last few days and the speed is consistently bad even when the disk is otherwise idle (apart from playing music). There were instances while I was doing the speed check that music would stop playing for 10-20 secs, presumably because of the disk being throttled.

 

I am not currently near it to try ejecting.

 

File size were just typical mp3 files at between 192 & 256 so probably around 4 to 5MB per file.

 

Thanks for taking the time to do a comparison.

MP3 album, 12 songs, total 91 MB, on SSD in MacBook Pro.

 

All iTunes including ITL file on Synology Ds210j NAS, 2x Seagate 2GB NAS drives.

 

Network is MBP > 11n Wi-Fi > router > Gigabit ethernet > NAS.

 

No beach balls. Total time 2m 09s. That equates to 0.7 MB/s, much slower than I expected.

 

I doubt this is any use in diagnosing your problem but having done the test I thought I might as well post the figures.

[Otto Nikolaus]

Also noticing that Scripts are running very slow too. Its taking minutes just to populate track numbers.

 

Could this all be due to me copying all my iTunes files (not media) from one mac to another?

Which scripts? Whatever they are, there is something badly wrong, but if we know what they are, perhaps that would help in finding the source of the problem.

[Keithb1498576217]

MP3 album, 12 songs, total 91 MB, on SSD in MacBook Pro.

 

All iTunes including ITL file on Synology Ds210j NAS, 2x Seagate 2GB NAS drives.

 

Network is MBP > 11n Wi-Fi > router > Gigabit ethernet > NAS.

 

No beach balls. Total time 2m 09s. That equates to 0.7 MB/s, much slower than I expected.

 

I doubt this is any use in diagnosing your problem but having done the test I thought I might as well post the figures.

 

By comparison...

 

MP3 album, 14 songs, total 80MB, on Flash Storage iMac 5K

 

iTunes ITL file stored on Flash Storage, media on Lacie d2 Thunderbolt 2 6TB drive.

 

Beach ball. Total time 00:50:45. Which I believe is 1.57 MB/s, which is actually quite a bit faster than yours.

 

I really don't think this is just my 'perception'. I'm adamant that my old iMac was much quicker.

[Keithb1498576217]

Which scripts? Whatever they are, there is something badly wrong, but if we know what they are, perhaps that would help in finding the source of the problem.

 

I was using one from Dougs Scripts called 'Put track prefix to track number'.

 

On a similar note, I am manually trying to change some song names on a newly uploaded album and it is taking 52 secs to save the song title and move to the next song. This should be instant almost.

 

iTunes is really becoming unusable for managing a collection (adding art, adding metadata etc).