1. Is there any preference between the several databases that are available? I have sqlite, Mysql, Postresql available. Is anyone of them faster?
2. I ask because it's taking over 24 hours to work through my collection of mp3's (300 gigs/34,517 tracks).  And this is definitely not the first time I've gone through building the collection db. So are there any short cuts? Actually it's gotten so bad that when I really want to hear  something I'll fire up xmms which always works.
3. Amarok seems to have a problem displaying the collection. I've actually gotten it to work once but once I asked for a sort in the collection window it seemed to go awry. And so far I've not been able to get the collection window to display again and we're talking about more than 10+ attempts.

version?

dangle_wtf wrote:version?

Excellent point. My bad for wasting time.

Amarok 1.4.10(using KDE 3.5.10 release 21.11 open Suse
suse 11.1 x86.64
Processor:
vendor_id      : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 16
model          : 2
model name      : AMD Phenom(tm) 9750 Quad-Core Processor
stepping        : 3
cpu MHz        : 2400.000
cache size      : 512 KB
Main Memory: 4 gigabyte
Storage: 1.5 terabyte

For such a large collection, mysql is probably going to be your best option. I don't know much about pgsql, and it might well be faster, but amarok's pgsql support has really only ever been a hack, as far as I know.

When you say "sort" do you mean the collection tab on the left, or the playlist window on the right? I suspect you're possibly loading everything into the playlist and trying to sort that, which is likely to cause all sorts of memory & resource issues - Amarok isn't really designed to be used that way.

You might like to look into smart playlists as a way of managing the size and order of the music you want to play.
You can change how the collection is displayed in a restricted number of ways by using the "group by..." button.