iTunes 12.3.1 — Total Trainwreck In El Cap

[Canes305]

At my wit's end with iTunes and damn-near ready to throw my MacBook out the window. This has gone on for over a month now, there have been several trips to the "Genius" Bar and no one has come close to helping me resolve. I've written on Apple-related forums and no resolution there, either.

To say iTunes is painfully slow is as gross an understatement I could make. CPU% shoots up to about 101.5 anytime I perform any action—trying to play a song, dragging into a playlist, attempting to edit a song title. Uploading a CD takes up to 15 minutes and the spinning rainbow beach ball of death is in effect more than it's not. When I do play a song, takes a good :30 before the song title / artists pop-up box shows up.

Apple techs had no answer for me; outside of suggesting I rebuild my library. Ho hum. 26K songs and 300 playlists. Let me get right on that. Furthermore, they said there "might" be a corrupt file, but let me know that this rebuild could go a long way in solving nothing. Thanks for the disclaimer.

Seems like a universal issue a lot of folks are having and until there's an iTunes update, everyone just has to deal with it. That said, wondered if anyone had any clean-up tips. Maybe there is a corrupt file. Maybe there is something fixable that it taxing the hell out of my system.

Either way, on the verge of losing it. Can't even sync my phone. Gets stuck on the Transferring Purchases (Step 4 of 7) for a half hour, before it crashes or pushes through.

 

[Rodan52]

My guess is that the reason it is so slow is the same reason why you don't want to rebuild your Library; 26000 songs and 300 playlists. We have no idea what Mac model, processor or storage it has or how much you have left. What I can say is a data base that big is going to require a fast processor say i5, i7 at least 20% of the HD free for virtual memory and 16Gb RAM. Have a read of this article; https://www.quora.com/How-big-of-a-library-can-iTunes-handle
Having said that there is a way to handle big libraries by creating more than one. See;http://www.wondershare.com/apple-software/reduce-itunes-library-size.html

 

[Partron22]

Too many smart playlists with Live Updating checked can bring your Mac to its knees.
Edit the lists and turn that off on the ones you really don't need it.

Likely there's iTunes cloud use issues that'll take your Mac down as well.
Consider keeping your library exclusively on an HD attached to your Mac.

 

[Partron22]

Dup.

 

[MrNomNoms]

What do you mean by Uploading a CD?

 

[leman]

My guess is that the reason it is so slow is the same reason why you don't want to rebuild your Library; 26000 songs and 300 playlists. We have no idea what Mac model, processor or storage it has or how much you have left. What I can say is a data base that big is going to require a fast processor say i5, i7 at least 20% of the HD free for virtual memory and 16Gb RAM.

If that is indeed the case, this would mean that iTunes uses very inefficient database design. Any modern database can easily deal with millions and of entries, and you certainly do not need fast hardware for that.

 

[Canes305]

My guess is that the reason it is so slow is the same reason why you don't want to rebuild your Library; 26000 songs and 300 playlists. We have no idea what Mac model, processor or storage it has or how much you have left. What I can say is a data base that big is going to require a fast processor say i5, i7 at least 20% of the HD free for virtual memory and 16Gb RAM. Have a read of this article; https://www.quora.com/How-big-of-a-library-can-iTunes-handle
Having said that there is a way to handle big libraries by creating more than one. See;http://www.wondershare.com/apple-software/reduce-itunes-library-size.html

I have a 1TB hard drive and 16GB of memory on mid-2012 MacBook Pro (Retina). 2.6GHx Intel Core i7. About 200GB of free space left.

Everything was humming along just fine up until the iTunes 12.3.1 and El Cap updates. Ever since, it's been a nightmare. At worst there as :02 lag time when clicking on a command. ANYTHING I do within iTunes now—CPU% immediately shoot sup to 101.5, or more.

Trying to sync a new iPhone6S right now as I wanted to add some new music to my phone for a road trip. Phone has been synced well over an hour and the "Transferring Purchases (Step 4 of 7)" has been on the screen (with about 5% of the task completed.) CPU% fluttering between 100.6 and 101.2. CPU Time at 2:13:19.80 or a little more.

Will read those articles. Thank you.

 

[Canes305]

Too many smart playlists with Live Updating checked can bring your Mac to its knees.
Edit the lists and turn that off on the ones you really don't need it.

Likely there's iTunes cloud use issues that'll take your Mac down as well.
Consider keeping your library exclusively on an HD attached to your Mac.

I don't use iCloud for anything and keep all my music on my MacBook. As mentioned above 1TB hard drive with about 200GB of free space.

What are some features that can be turned off so help iTunes not be so taxed? I don't use Apple Music, either. Just a boatload of music ripped from CDs at 320kbps.

 

[Canes305]

What do you mean by Uploading a CD?

I mean ripping a CD at 320kbps into iTunes as opposed to downloading my music at 256kbps from Apple's iTunes store. I still purchased CD's for quality as a I have a Hi-Fi set-up with a turntable and floor speakers in my home.

When trying to rip a CD to iTunes, it now takes a good 15 minutes with the iTunes / El Cap updates and everything not meshing well together. Two months back it took a minute or so to rip a CD.

 

[KALLT]

I generally can't play iTunes music in the background anymore while doing a CPU- or memory-intensive task. iTunes is really heavy now and whenever I do something streaming-related, my system is crawling. For instance, just clicking on the download button in my music library will make iTunes really choppy and unresponsive for the duration of the download. Downloading a whole list of songs makes iTunes unusable. The program is extremely unoptimised. Ironically, Spotify is very smooth despite being a natively wrapped web application. I rarely see so smooth web applications.

The sad thing is that the same happens on my iPhone. My iPhone 6 will become hot while search for music with Apple Music. The only other apps this happens with is heavier games. There are clearly some deep problems there.

 

[Partron22]

I generally can't play iTunes music in the background anymore while doing a CPU- or memory-intensive task. ..... There are clearly some deep problems there.

My copy of iTunes 10.4.1 is running like a dream under El Cap. About 22K songs. I keep a copy of 12.3.whatever around for purchases and syncing w devices that require it.
In terms of listening to and organizing your music, the App moved past its prime when v11 came out.

 

[Canes305]

My copy of iTunes 10.4.1 is running like a dream under El Cap. About 22K songs. I keep a copy of 12.3.whatever around for purchases and syncing w devices that require it.
In terms of listening to and organizing your music, the App moved past its prime when v11 came out.

How does one revert back to 10.4.1 as I would do that in a second, if possible.

Went from 12.3.1 back to 12.3 recently but zero difference.

Don't need any of iTunes' newer features. Simply want functionality and more of a seamless experience.

 

[Partron22]

How does one revert back to 10.4.1 as I would do that in a second, if possible.

People started trying to roll back around 12.2. Here's a thread. There are others, and it's also all over the internet.
Here's a script that'll help you rescue track info from the clutches of 12.3: Move Track info (playcount etc) from one iTunes Library to another.

 

[Primejimbo]

My guess is that the reason it is so slow is the same reason why you don't want to rebuild your Library; 26000 songs and 300 playlists. We have no idea what Mac model, processor or storage it has or how much you have left. What I can say is a data base that big is going to require a fast processor say i5, i7 at least 20% of the HD free for virtual memory and 16Gb RAM. Have a read of this article; https://www.quora.com/How-big-of-a-library-can-iTunes-handle
Having said that there is a way to handle big libraries by creating more than one. See;http://www.wondershare.com/apple-software/reduce-itunes-library-size.html

I have a mid 2010 Mac mini with 2.4 Ghz with 8GB of RAM with 500 movies, 25,000 songs, all on an external hard drive, and no issues. 16GB of RAM need? I had 2GB 2 years ago and it was ok then.

I had issues years ago and someone on here showed me how to uninstall iTunes on a Mac and re-install it, my issues were fixed.

 

[xmichaelp]

Universal issue? No. The only issues I have are UI bugs.

 

[Canes305]

I have a mid 2010 Mac mini with 2.4 Ghz with 8GB of RAM with 500 movies, 25,000 songs, all on an external hard drive, and no issues. 16GB of RAM need? I had 2GB 2 years ago and it was ok then.

I had issues years ago and someone on here showed me how to uninstall iTunes on a Mac and re-install it, my issues were fixed.

I tried that and it didn't work. Backed up iTunes to an external, wiped out iTunes on MacBook, did fresh reinstall and added the library back. Didn't change anything for me, unfortunately.

 

[MrNomNoms]

I mean ripping a CD at 320kbps into iTunes as opposed to downloading my music at 256kbps from Apple's iTunes store. I still purchased CD's for quality as a I have a Hi-Fi set-up with a turntable and floor speakers in my home.

When trying to rip a CD to iTunes, it now takes a good 15 minutes with the iTunes / El Cap updates and everything not meshing well together. Two months back it took a minute or so to rip a CD.

Oh, if that is the case then give up on iTunes for ripping and move over to XLD:

http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html

I started using XLD years ago and haven't looked back since when you consider the flexibility of tweaking the codec, the option of being able to use cdparanoia to ensure bit for bit perfect copying when creating FLAC backup copies of ones cd's. At this point iTunes only does two things for me - a library and synchronising my music.

 

[Canes305]

... a quick update; low and behold the recent Apple, OS and iTunes updates last week solved all my iTunes-related woes.

What a shock; a software glitch that Apple refused to admit was the case. In six trips to the local Apple store and sit-downs with the Genius bar folk, nothing was solve. A corrupt file on my end was to blame and I was told to rebuild my extensive library. Size of the library and multiple playlists was blamed. Running Little Snitch with some programs was blamed.

Literally everything was blamed except Apple's software—which was the lone culprit.

So glad I didn't waste DAYS ON END rebuilding an entire library that took years to build.

Beyond disappointed with Apple for wasting three months of my time with this annoying issue and furthermore, for not owning up to the problem—to a point where their employees have no idea what's going on and will mislead / blame customers for the problems.

Bush league nonsense.

 

[Agent2015]

... a quick update; low and behold the recent Apple, OS and iTunes updates last week solved all my iTunes-related woes.

What a shock; a software glitch that Apple refused to admit was the case. In six trips to the local Apple store and sit-downs with the Genius bar folk, nothing was solve. A corrupt file on my end was to blame and I was told to rebuild my extensive library. Size of the library and multiple playlists was blamed. Running Little Snitch with some programs was blamed.

Literally everything was blamed except Apple's software—which was the lone culprit.

So glad I didn't waste DAYS ON END rebuilding an entire library that took years to build.

Beyond disappointed with Apple for wasting three months of my time with this annoying issue and furthermore, for not owning up to the problem—to a point where their employees have no idea what's going on and will mislead / blame customers for the problems.

Bush league nonsense.

To be fair I have much the same setup on a MacBook Pro Early 2011 17" with 16 GB RAM 500 GB SSD and have not experienced any of the woes you list throughout the El Cap Beta process and through the recent recent releases of El Cap and iTunes. 25K songs and counting. iTunes has always performed flawlessly for me.