Use the same drive with Engine DJ (Desktop) and Engine DJ (OS) - Explained

General Area Tips, Tricks, & Tutorials
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1

So you have a huge collection of all the wedding bangers since the inception of recorded music, but you are not happy with the time it takes to export to another drive just so you can playback.

:lab_coat:

This is for advanced users and for the brave :older_man:t6: :older_man:t6: :older_man:t6:

:lab_coat:

You canā€™t use internal drives for this. Only USB Externals

:lab_coat:

For best results, i will advise a total library overhaul (delete engine folders)

:open_hands:t6:

Luckily both engine dj desktop software and engine dj (os) can read the same external drive

:small_airplane:

  1. All your Music files must be on an external drive (ExFat is advisable)
  2. This drive will be referred/called to as Collection drive going forward
  3. We will no longer be using music files stored in the computerā€™s internal storage.
  4. Whenever you acquire new music files, it has to be saved to the Collection Drive first
  5. Start Up Engine DJ 2.0
  6. Drag the music folders from the Collection drive to the Engine Collection (Pro-tip - its smarter to have one Main folder on the collection drive called DJ MUSIC or DJ COLLECTION)
  7. Do your thing as you will normally do - analyse, hotcue, grids, playlist etc (But do not export or use Sync Manager to do anything - we donā€™t need it)
  8. When you are done with your prep work, disconnect the drive from computer, and connect it to your P2, P4, 5/6000, Numark or Go.
  9. You will see everything shows up just like you expect - playlists, tracks, hotcues etc

The Collection Drive holds your music (valuable) - PLEASE CREATE A CLONE OF IT - I use Carbon Copy Cloner. Your Clone is the back up incase something happens to the drive.

The CLONE will function just like the original drive (Bonus)

To make further changes to your library, you must always plug the drive into your laptop.

If you start Engine DJ (Desktop) without the drive you would just have an empty library (If you did everything correctly) - If you see red missing files that means you missed a step.

If everything works fine, you can delete all the music stored in your laptops internal driveā€¦and get that space back for your ever expanding exotic grown up movie collection. :movie_camera: :movie_camera:

or you can decide to keep them as a back up.

You can still make small exports to other drives as well from the Collection Drive using sync manager eg say you are playing a small set.

10 Likes
2

I was just about to ask about this.

Iā€™m new to the Prime 4. Iā€™ve set up an internal drive on it with all my music on. Iā€™ve connected my laptop to it and created a couple of playlists.

Today I was going to set about creating playlists properly. So I sat down with my laptop, turned it on and the library is empty.

I just assumed Iā€™d be able to create playlists on my laptop sat on the couch, then connect the laptop back to the prime 4 and export the playlists over. But it seems I have to have the prime 4 actually connected to the laptop at the time I want to create playlists. Thereā€™s no kind of ā€œofflineā€ playlist creation.

Is that really right?? If so then Iā€™ll be doing exactly what this post suggests and it tells me it makes no sense to keep the drive internal to the prime 4 if itā€™s only staying in the house.

3

Yeah Iā€™m in the same boat. Just got a P2 and will add an internal SSD drive, but Iā€™m really confused regarding Engine library, playlists and transferring of files.

This seems like a great and secure way to do it, but how do you incorporate the internal SSD drive in this system?

And is it really true that you canā€™t make playlist on the standalone device (P2) and export/save them for later?

Thanks

4

I donā€™t use the internal ssd bay, too much hassle to keep updated (personal opinion)

if i were to find a use case for it, it will probably be used as a dump for all my music and probably will only get updated periodically. say once every few months.

So technically it will be used as a back up of some sort.

I prefer using a USB connected storage device (personal preference)

1 Like
5

Ah OK, thanks.

So you prefer to attach an external USB drive instead of using an internal SSD?

Why is it a hassle to use the internal ( if I may askā€¦). Is it because of the sync with Engine?

Appreciate your help!

6

Mainly because:

  1. You have to be physically connected to a near computer to copy files to internal HDD, at least until Denon provide us a native wireless option to do it.

  2. While uā€™re in ā€œcomputer modeā€ to transfer files, u canā€™t use P4 as a player.

  3. Canā€™t copy from USB/SDCard to internal HDD on the P4 itself.

Here another member of the club ā€œI leave my internal HDD only for backup pourposes and use an SDCard as libraryā€

2 Likes
7

Wowā€¦I see your points, but it is the totally opposite of what I thought was smart.

I bought the Prime 2 to avoid the computer as much as possible, and wanted the internal SSD to gain totally freedom.

So you donā€™t even play tracks from the internal SSD? Is it only a passive backup? How do you manage the SD/USB (transfer and playlists)?

Thanks

8

I use a 2TB Samsung T7 portable drive that I connect via USB.

NVME and pretty fast (on the laptop side). It contains 700gb of music files (my entire library 75k songs).

My reality is that iā€™m using the computer more. I like having my grids and bpm to be spot on, before playing ,there is no way to make ā€œadvancedā€ changes on the devices eg if a BPM is incorrect.

Except all your music is from streaming services, there is no avoiding the computer in the workflow.

1 Like
9

I seeā€¦yes itā€™s difficult to avoid the computer this age. I mostly play music without a precise grid: Soul, funk, evergreens,jazz,reggae, but also house and electro with stable bpm, so theyā€™ll have to go through Engine.

Iā€™ll hate to make playlist on the computer thoughā€¦it seems really rigid.

Will have a look at T7

10

Save some euros. This sandisk is similar to the T7

Screenshot 2021-11-15 190109
Screenshot 2021-11-15 1901091732Ɨ750 172 KB

11

Thanks a lot :hugs: - looks great. Will get one of these.

I still consider an internal SSD (as wellā€¦). I really like the idea of a self contained system.

12

I followed the above tutorial step by step. Everything worked fine, connected the external drive to my SC5000, rebooted my laptop, connected the external drive to my laptop again andā€¦ all my playlists are goneā€¦

I still see them under the drive section, when I select my external harddrive, but Iā€™m unable to add any new files to my collection.