Hi, sorry to take so long to reply, but finding time these days is not that easy.
I have seen this in past, usually when running the library thru any NAS or external drive.
As I have pointed out on my post, you have to consider TWO different things:
1) the library itself
2) the iTunes datafiles
Usually, this two considerations have different sympthom - either network slowness OR read slowness of the iTunes .xlm file.
If you look into your profile, you will find the itunes library.xml file. I never put it on my profile path OR at any storage. When iTunes opens, it does read that xml file, and it can take awhile. My .xml file is about 200MB size, which was taken a bit to open. That slowness you can resolv only by placing these files inside a SSD local drive.
To read the library itself, it will take considerable amount of time, primary due to network slowness. Every single file that it "find", its pointer is placed on that .xml file.
So again: the iTunes needed files is better to place on a SSD or mSSD inside your computer.
The library is better to put in a place where you can backuo it up. The slowness is only at the first time to read all data and "mount" the .xml files.
Believe me, unfortunately I have to deal with iTunes and Apple Stuff. Im not a Apple lover, but it does what it has to. For kids and entertainment, iTunes and Apple Devices are just that good.
Yet, after ios 7 update, now all songs are appearing as "unknown artist". Apple does some good jobs (not Jobs) from time to time, but they messed up after that update.
Hope this help. Enjoy.
Keep in mind: people usually think that processor and RAM are bottlenecks, but usually they are not. HDD and network slowness is much worse than poor processor or RAM.
Consider this: if you have a countinous file on your HDD, and it can read at most at around 45 MB/s, what happens if you place same files on a SSD disk where you can read at 350 MB/s at least?
Something extra came up now, I do remember that at the first beginning, Antivirus softwares was always "looking" and "spying" iTunes activity. Try to put iTunes.exe and other itunes files under GOOD PROGRAMS and avoid to read open packages.
Cian McAuliffe :
Question for Luis.
Hi there. I'm running 2 itunes libary, a 200gb library stored on my macbook pro and a second larger library with just under 2 tb stored on an external hard drive.
The issue is with the performance of the large library stored on the hard drive. Updating the metadata or deleting songs takes ages. I upgraded from 4gb ram to 16gb but still have issues. I've looked at having the large libraries .itl files stored on my mac. While this speeds up the updating of the metadata, the problem is when I delete songs they remain on the hard drive. Any solutions?
I want to keep both libraries seperate, as I will join them after I've gone through the larger library. Considering there are 200,000 songs, this will take awhile!