FYI:

I switched to mysql today, re-scanned my collection and all works beautifully; not only is the CPU plateau gone (i.e. I can flip through songs as soon as they start playing, looking for a good one), but the rest of the interface is much more snappy whenever I'm dragging albums or doing things in the context menu etc.

Myth? Maybe, but not in this case: MySQL pwned SQLite.

Thanks to everyone for their help!

well, i haven't tried mysql yet, but i suppose it might help. but why did the problem start so suddenly? I have exactly the same problem: a few weeks ago (2 weeks, i suppose) amarok got SLOWWWWWW... very slow. drag'n'drop of albums from collection to playlist suddenly takes ages, minutes sometimes. something must have trashed the sql performance... i also have some 8000 tracks, btw.

the problem really isn't improving - amarok once was bloody fast, and i used it to show off to my friends, but since 3 weeks (and no big changes to my system or mp3 collection) it's getting bloody SLOW. a few minutes ago (!) i added 12 songs to my collection folder (just dropped them in /home/superstoned/mp3/new order). amarok is still frozen solid, apperantly updating its collection.  'wait' in top (IO) is over 60%, amarokapp takes 35% cpu. WTF???

sorry, but guys, something is wrong. amarok once was fast - and now it got REALLY SLOW.

Can't reproduce. Mine is fast as oiled lightning.

well, it looks like someone did fix this. i'm not sure if it's as fast as it was before, but it sure doesn't take minutes anymore to drop a 1000 songs from the collection to the playlist (approx 5 secs now before it shows how many songs and the album pictures, very doable. it still seems slower to really add the files, but i'm not sure). I hope the future will bring a Strigi-based database which could be faster... Or i should try mysql, i know.

it's a bit weird. 10 minutes ago, i drag'n'dropped a folder, and it took several minutes (!) to do it. now, it took amarok 5 seconds to start adding 2100 files to the database, and this went with a speed of 50/second (which i consider rather slow). inbetween, i did an svn update and install of amarok, so it could be fixed inbetween... still, Strigi developer Jos van den Oever told me both actions (drag'n'drop and adding the actual files) could go much faster, and strigi might help here with it's fast database. I hope it does help, and amarok might be able to use it for KDE 4...


edit: now 700 songs took seven seconds to drag'n'drop (yeah, inconsistency all over...) and again 50files/sec.

at least, it would be nice if drag'n'drop would start immediately, and add the pictures and the amount of dropped file in a seperate thread or something. threadweaver in kdelibs might help?!? (i'm no hacker, but it sounds like it could...)

i changed my database to MySQL. this is amazingly much faster. actually it seems to be back to it's 'old' speed. i still wonder if that's because SQLlite can't handle more than 8.000 songs, or the amarok code connecting to it simply got worse some time ago...

well, it's fixed for me. now let's hope Amarok 2.0 won't need MySQL to get a decent performance with a collection of 8000 songs...