Any ideas?

no one?

I'm my personal experience less crates has show better results how many crates are we talking? Also do you have a lot of smart crates/live update?

Thank you Dj Blee for your response. I don't use smart crates or live update, but i sure have a lot of crates. I don't know how many, and i don't know how to count them. I erased a few yesterday but there are a lot more left and the problem wasn't fixed

If this is in Windows it's normal. I had this too before I switched to Mac.

My older 2008 Macbook would still have this if I mix music videos. Serato CPU meter @ 60% on normal operation.

Make sure no other application is running behind the scene.

i didn't think about asking windows/mac... up if windows my dad has that problem with his, i'm still trying to talk him into a mac but he's in his 50s i don't think he will ever change.

My 2008 MBP would do that as well if i was mixing videos (in SDJ and SL)

make sure bluetooth and wifi are turned off that will help as well (thats if you can turn them off)

It's not a windows pc, I own a macbook pro i5, I bought it two years ago

Hallo Mr Kane and thank you for your response...

My mac specifications are the following :
Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch Late 2013
CPU 2,4 GHz i5
RAM 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel Iris 1536 MB
OSX Yosemite 10.10.
Internal drive 256 GB SSD
External USB Drive 1TB intenso
DJ Hardware Pioneer DDJ S1 + Denon MC 2000


I will try to make the optimizations for mac as you mentioned, and watch it for a few days to see if something is changed and let you informed....

Hallo and sorry for my late response but i was trying to find out what's going on with my computer.... I made some optimizations on my mac as you described and i erased some unnecessary crates. Things got a little better, but the screen freezing insists, but not all the time. I tried to figure out WHEN it's happening, but it seemed impossible to understand. Sometimes it freezes all the time, sometimes it freezes at a couple of songs and sometimes it seems working fine. The only thing I can tell for sure is that when i shut down serato, it doesn't shut down at once, but i have to press yes twice, it appears the rainbow mouse for a couple of seconds and then it shuts down. I don't know if this has anything to do with it. I also noticed that when navigating to crates can cause screen freezing too

Hallo and sorry for my late response but i was trying to find out what's going on with my computer.... I made some optimizations on my mac as you described and i erased some unnecessary crates. Things got a little better, but the screen freezing insists, but not all the time. I tried to figure out WHEN it's happening, but it seemed impossible to understand. Sometimes it freezes all the time, sometimes it freezes at a couple of songs and sometimes it seems working fine. The only thing I can tell for sure is that when i shut down serato, it doesn't shut down at once, but i have to press yes twice, it appears the rainbow mouse for a couple of seconds and then it shuts down. I don't know if this has anything to do with it. I also noticed that when navigating to crates can cause screen freezing too...

Vassilis_Laz



This is a separate issue, that we are aware of and are planning to have fixed.

The screen issue you are working on with Kane, so i'll let you continue to work with him on.

Regards,
MP

Yesterday I noticed that the same thing happens to scratch live too...

have tried a number of things since your last message but nothing changed... I dod not follow all the steps but most of them... I did most of the steps referred on the article "mac optimization" but i found difficulty in following some of the article "lowering memory usage". For example i can't follow a simple structure of my files because this means a lot of work and i am afraid i might lose the files and the songs. i also tried to open the activity monitor but i can't understand a thing there....... i also did repairing disk permissions but only on macintosh hd because it wouldn't let me do this on my external drive. I will also try to erase more crates, but it needs a lot of thinking to decide which ones to let out.... About a couple of months ago I added many crates, almost a new library of a friend of mine and that caused my library to be huge... I only did it because i had read that serrate dj supports large libraries. If i had known that i would have issues like this I would have never done it.

Hallo again, I would like to add that after a few moths and a number of updates, I use the latest update for serato and I also moved to el capitan, I moved tons of music, crates and subcrates to the iTunes playlist so that I only use them when i need them by ticking the "show iTunes" button whenever needed, but the problem insists. Things got a little better but did not disappear. It usually freezes my screen when i load a song to a deck or even when i move a song to prepare list. Not as often as before but it has not stopped doing it. I don't know what else to do, I erased tons of music, crates and subcrates but it doesn't get any better. Perhaps there is another problem than the amount of music on my hard drive. Please help

I experinced that before on my WD USB External Drive…. what i did is i switched to WD with firewire and the songs load instantly no more LAG

Hey there everyone,

If you'd like to run your issues through with a member of our technical support team, please just drop them a help request by clicking the 'Get Help from Serato' button back on the main forum page. They're more than happy to run through steps to help you.

Hey Marcus S, This WAS a help request... I don't know why it has been moved to general discussion. I was talking with the support team a long time ago but the problem is not yet solved. Should I open a new request again from the start?

Would you say that it is a usb problem or a hard drive problem? Also I noticed that when in offline player it loads the songs ok... from the same hard drive...

I notice when you have less songs there isn't much lag...

I have 82,000 songs on my 3tb portable usb3 hard drive I get lag when I first scroll through my crates and music, but when I scroll through my crates and songs the second time it doesn't lag. it has always been like this through different versions of SDJ, the other day I added more songs that made my collection grow to around 98,000 songs and I found that Serato was unstable and a lot more Lag so I had to remove songs and bring it back down to 82,000 songs, I feel The "Large Database" issue is still there and its not quite right, until Serato becomes a 64bit Software to be able to utilize more Ram... which I have been asking for so many years....... 2016 and Serato is a 32BIT software wow

Hey, DjSyndic8

Do you see lagging only when browsing or when loading the songs too? Because in my case, serrate freezes my screen and my controller for a couple of seconds and to causes problems when i have to mix songs really fast. It even freezes when i put a song to the prepare crate. It sure is not a normal situation. It must be more than just the serato being a 32 bit software. There has to be something else....

I only experience lag when I'm browsing when I'm loading songs its fine but I did notice a lot of lag when I load my songs just on my windows laptop but now I have a Mac book pro I don't get that issue anymore, are you on windows or Mac? and how many songs do you have?

It is a mac, I have it about two years, that's why it is strange...

it's always a pucker moment when the screen freezes lmao

Hard drive problem… try using HD with firewire or thundrbolt

Never heard of this external. Are you sure it's compatible with Mac? Also if the drive is not in the correct file format you will have nothing but issues with this drive. It should be Fat32 (PC and Mac or Mac Journaled (Mac Only)

Sorry meant to quote the name of the drive. Never heard of Intenso nor do I know how reliable it is for macs. Maybe someone can chime in? If anything always use a Solid State Ext drive. Regular drives are not always reliable and have a high failure rate unfortunately.

I see you meant "intense" as it's storage. We need more information about what exact external you are using. Some are not even compatible with macs which may result in the issues you are having🤔

"exfat" format is the best for windows and Mac together

Haven't formatted any of my drives in Exfat. I always kept them Fat32 or Mac Journaled. What is the difference between Exfat and Fat32🤔

Thank you all for your responses. I just wanted to make something clear. The name of the company of the hard drive is Intenso and the auto correct changed it to intense... It is a FAT 32 usb3 hard drive. I just want to add that using the same hard drive at the offline player doesn't seem to have any problem loading the songs. Only when I use serato while playing....

exfat format allows 4gb and over files on a mac format....... fat32 has a file size limit

Good to know. I always used disk utility when formatting drives but never looked into the Exfat format.

I did some research on this drive and cannot find any review at all on Amazon because there aren't any. From what I have seen they are very "cheap" drives which cost under $100 bucks which I would doubt are reliable at all. I'm gonna double check and see if there's a decent review of them on YouTube or something. My honest opinion I would not trust this drive at all. Go with a SSD external like a Samsung or WD.

Thanx for your trouble, man... I must say that intenso is quite popular brand here in greece mostly for her usb flash drive sticks. I hadn't tested it as a hard drive before.... On the other hand i have a feeling that the same problem first appeared on my older seagate drive, but i am not sure of this, I can't remember exactly when this started

Being a I.T Guy first and DJ on the side, I can tell you that the lag and the freezing of the screen are hardware issue. what I mean is that hardware spec on your machine maybe on the low end or even mid end. Becuase the CPU of your pc has to play music, load music and then search for music on an external drive, all at the same time. Thats a big load on its processor, I know, I am still running on a 5 year old laptop. I get the lag and the freeze when loading music up in the decks.

I know I will be upgrading my 5 y/o pc to the latest Mac with an i7 Processor and tons of ram in it and a massive SSD Drive in it. I also think due to serato being only a 32bit application, it can't take advantage of more ram, which I think is a huge Achilles heel for Serato. if you are going to use an external drive, definitely go with a SSD and USB3 connection (if your mac or pc will support usb3). using an external drive and it's not an SSD drive means slower seek times which equals lag and freeze for the pc or mac.

Just some food for thought when running serato with old pc or mac. And yes I agree whole heartedly that Serator need to go to a 64bit platform. Will probably solve a lot of our lag and freezing, when loading music up!

just my two cents! Sorry for the long post.

Since you're an IT What's your opinion on hybrid drives? Like part SSD part HDD

I totally agree with you. But the thing is that my macbook is NOT old, about 2 years old, it HAS an SSD, so I guess all the lag I get comes from my external HD... Or there is something else to it... Anyway, your post was helpful...

It's always best to have a ext drive with thunderbolt port and use your thunderbolt port which is super fast and always frees up a USB port👍🏻 esp since Your hardware uses one of the ports itself.

I would definitely suggest on upgrading to an extenal SSD drive if that's the setup you want to go with, i don't know how big your SSD drive is on the Mac itself, but if you can and you only use that mac book for DJ'ing. I would highly recommend storing your music on the internal SSD drive and keep the external as a back up. It's always faster to run files directly off the internal drive especially if you have an option between SSD and HDD. Always go SSD.

So is that a no to the hybrid