Media Center 15.0.112 (coming soon) introduces a series of new optimizations to the core media database.
The new system can often make a search (which underpins most everything else) 30% or more faster. It also improves performance of several other core database routines.
In general, the database is very well optimized so it's not too often we figure out a way to get a big jump in core performance.
To illustrate the performance difference, here are a couple before (v105) and after (v112) comparisons:
Synthetic: Benchmark 'Database > Search database' (average of two runs)
Before: 2.182s
After: 1.377s
37% faster
Real-world: Searching from the search box typing 'metallica', then 'aerosmith', then 'metallica' (total of all three searches)
Before: 50.77ms
After: 23.64ms
53% faster
Enjoy.
[UPDATE: More optimizations were done since this original post, resulting in more dramatic performance improvements than stated above. See below for more information.]