iTunes Optimization???

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if it's possible to do anything to optimize the performance of iTunes on a desktop Mac. Presently it takes a good 15 minutes from the time I launch the app until I'm able to actually click on anything after the beach ball stops spinning, and then at random times it'll get stuck "thinking" during playback or iPhone sync and the beach ball will spin for another 15 minutes before letting me perform another action. Any song that was playing when the ball started spinning will continue playing until it ends, but a new track won't start until the ball stops. While it's stuck, opening the Force Quit menu says that iTunes is "not responding," but quitting and restarting does nothing to help the issue (it starts over again with another 15-minute wait time at relaunch), and it says "not responding" until whatever point it magically comes back to life. Similarly, changing any information in the Comments section of the Info screen for any number of files (even just one) leads to a one- to two-minute wait before iTunes unlocks and I can move on. It's very frustrating and seems like it shouldn't be happening, so if anyone can suggest any fixes I'd love to hear them!

Technically speaking, I'm on a MacPro running OS 10.6.7 with iTunes 10.2.1(1). The music is on four internal RAID drives which are all functioning properly and there are 111,707 songs in my library, or 965.28 GB of music. Anything else you need to know?

Thanks!

Tim!

MacPro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), See notes.

Posted on Mar 30, 2011 3:07 PM

Reply
2 replies

Mar 30, 2011 6:08 PM in response to Cadwallin

Ram and processing indeed will effect how smoothly things run, but there are a couple of things you can do before resorting to upgrading your hardware.

I've been having troubles with itunes being sluggish for a while now. It would hang up for several seconds after changing tracks or while adding new tracks. I have a fairly large library (60,000+ tracks), stored on an external drive. The lag was so obnoxious that I resorted to using alternative music players like Cog and Audirvana (which actually sounds FAR better than itunes). But of course if you want to sync your device, those are out...

Today I finally found a few tips to get itunes running at a more reasonable speed. These are the things that worked for me:

1. In iTunes Preferences, under Sharing, uncheck "Look for shared libraries" and "Share my library on my local network"

2. Get rid of any smart playlists.

3. In the View menu, select "View Options". The fewer columns selected, the less hang ups when scrolling through your tunes.

basically, the idea is to disable any extra options that are not being used

if none of that works, this might help:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2536941&start=0&tstart=0

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

iTunes Optimization???

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.