I'm also having a massive slow-down when tagging. As you describe, this seems somewhat dependent on the tag being changed, although for me it's been inconsistent enough that I can't say for sure which tag fields are the worst. What I do know is that ever since my library went over 10,000 songs, my tagging ability as turned into sludge.... Although, my library went over 10,000 around the same time that I switched from MC 9 to 10, so it's hard to say if it's the library size or MC10 that was the problem... but I'm running a separate machine at work where I only have 3,000 songs in the library, and the tagging is much faster there (tagging slow-downs do occur, but not as often)
I was hoping that MC11 would solve the problem, but so far it's worse, if anything (of course, the library is even bigger now, close to 15,000 songs, and the bigger my libary is the slower the updates are, I think, although it possible I'm imagining this since it's hard to judge exactly).
Here's the scoop:
If I batch a group of files, the slow down does not occur as often because MC11 moves the tagging to the background and I can continue to work on files. However, if I go to update a single file I can get a 3- to 30-second delay while I wait for the update -- the tagging does not become a background operation and instead freezes up MC11 while I wait. The track number field seems to be the worst, although all tag fields have given me problems -- including the frequently used Name, Artist, and Album tags, and even the date tag on occasion.
The weird thing is that this problem does not always occur. Sometimes I'll get a 10 second delay for every single field I'm trying to update on every file, while other times tagging is quick and painless. I might guess that it has something to do with MC11 having to create an Id3v2 tag when there is only a Id3v1 tag in the file, or vice-versa, but I'm really not sure -- the slow down occurs on such a variety of files gleaned from so many sources that it's hard to pinpoint. The only certainty is that Individual field updates are definitely far worse than batch updates, and the MC11 background-taggin' feature is awesome when it kicks in.
MC tagging is fast a lot of time, so I'm not giving up on it as my tagger, but it's been *so* slow so often for over a year that I am too often thrown into bouts of screaming at the computer screen as I wait 30 seconds for a track # tag and name field to update.
Any ideas -- other than bringing a copy of MC11 with me to group therapy to resolve our growing love-hate relationship?
-- Luke
Cheap Music for the Masses