Pretty Close to Giving Up

For several years I had a good system for keeping my music library on an external drive and moving between systems...using iTunes on my Mac desktop as the master database management (with the actual music files on the external), Traktor and Serato worked great on my laptop with the external, I'd use Rekordbox on the desktop to make flash drives for CDJs, both Pioneer and Denon, and it worked great. In the past year or so, macOS, Rekordbox, Engine, and iTunes have all had drastic updates and now nothing works. Engine crashes in the middle of export, Denon hardware doesn't read Rekordbox drives, Serato has a really hard time with the combination of Apple's new music software and the external drive...due to Covid I don't have Pioneer players to test right now... the only thing I can barely do is use Serato on the external but there's still complications with the new .musiclibrary format. I had to sell my Denon SC5000s because they were pretty useless to me after all this. I had ordered a Prime GO before Covid and then like 6 months later it finally came, and in those 6 months everything changed. Even Tidal integration sucks because there's no BPM data and no on board analyzing. I posted in the Denon forums and got nothing. I guess I have to buy a new hard drive for my laptop that is big enough to hold my entire library? There's a possibility that Pioneer decks would work correctly but I don't have 3 grand to get some. Does anyone have any suggestions? Anyone out there using Apple Music-based external drives across multiple systems? Yes all my software is up to date.

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Originally Posted by djbrokenrecord

For several years I had a good system for keeping my music library on an external drive and moving between systems...using iTunes on my Mac desktop as the master database management (with the actual music files on the external), Traktor and Serato worked great on my laptop with the external, I'd use Rekordbox on the desktop to make flash drives for CDJs, both Pioneer and Denon, and it worked great. In the past year or so, macOS, Rekordbox, Engine, and iTunes have all had drastic updates and now nothing works. Engine crashes in the middle of export, Denon hardware doesn't read Rekordbox drives, Serato has a really hard time with the combination of Apple's new music software and the external drive...due to Covid I don't have Pioneer players to test right now... the only thing I can barely do is use Serato on the external but there's still complications with the new .musiclibrary format. I had to sell my Denon SC5000s because they were pretty useless to me after all this. I had ordered a Prime GO before Covid and then like 6 months later it finally came, and in those 6 months everything changed. Even Tidal integration sucks because there's no BPM data and no on board analyzing. I posted in the Denon forums and got nothing. I guess I have to buy a new hard drive for my laptop that is big enough to hold my entire library? There's a possibility that Pioneer decks would work correctly but I don't have 3 grand to get some. Does anyone have any suggestions? Anyone out there using Apple Music-based external drives across multiple systems? Yes all my software is up to date.

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Get a cheap Windows Laptop to manage your libraries, so you don't have to deal with Apple's "not give a fuck" mentality toward software devs.

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Originally Posted by the_bastet

Get a cheap Windows Laptop to manage your libraries, so you don't have to deal with Apple's "not give a fuck" mentality toward software devs.

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Thanks for the suggestion. The problem is that I spend most of my time on my main mac desktop, so it works best for me to keep my master database there. But I may have to change that.

Could you roll back to a previous OS version that you know worked? Apples arrogance with updates, and overpricing, is why I will never own any of their products. My M.O is broadly similar to yours but I run it off a PC and therefore kept my sc5000's.

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Originally Posted by Stazbumpa

Could you roll back to a previous OS version that you know worked? Apples arrogance with updates, and overpricing, is why I will never own any of their products. My M.O is broadly similar to yours but I run it off a PC and therefore kept my sc5000's.

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It sounds like in any case I'm going to have to stop doing what I was doing before. I do a lot of other work on the mac desktop (production, editing for radio, etc) so it's really great to be able to keep my collection organized on there. Perhaps I'll get another machine just for DJing purposes but it's going to be a bummer to not be able to manage my connection on my main desktop.

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Originally Posted by Stazbumpa

Could you roll back to a previous OS version that you know worked? Apples arrogance with updates, and overpricing, is why I will never own any of their products. My M.O is broadly similar to yours but I run it off a PC and therefore kept my sc5000's.

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Oh and sorry, to answer your question, I need to have the latest OS to do the other work that i do.

In an effort to be more productive, I can try asking more specific questions:

-Has anyone had Engine 1.5.1 for macOS just completely shut down your computer while exporting to flash drive? It happens every time.
-Has anyone had Engine only copy certain tracks to sync, chosen seemingly at random, instead of all tracks?
-Has anyone had problems with Serato reading from an Apple Music Library on an external drive?
-Has anyone had problems with Denon Prime hardware reading Rekordbox 5 flash drives?
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Maybe not the suggestion you want to hear but Rekordbox 6 works perfectly now with latest OS.

Maybe a cheap pioneer controller to mix on? DDJ 400? Or ext players like XDJ 700s?

Surprised Serato doesn't work yet...

Not thaaaaaat surprised about Engine software though... I know it should work etc, it's a big company but I just expect pioneer to sort their shit out faster...

Thanks for the suggestion...what I always liked about my previous set up was that it worked with everything. I played with a lot of DJs, and I could pretty much get away with any set up that anyone needed...even if they needed Rekordbox players, the Denons worked, even if they needed to control Serato, the Denons can do that too (but now Serato is a problem with the iTunes upgrade).

Yeah, I'm surprised Serato isn't working correctly either. But that's why I'm asking for advice, maybe someone can think of something I'm doing wrong.

WOW, just saw the announcement, I was actively shopping for NXS2's....so glad I didn't decide on them =D I'll just grab the new ones.

I would suggest installing an application such as VMWare Fusion on your Mac which would allow you to run a Windows Virtual Machine on your Mac to do whatever you need to do in Windows, on your Mac.