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[flac.rules]

MC is in general very fast, but when using a library server, some actions do take a little while, and I feel it could be handled more smoothly by the program, an example is when library syncing is on, and you change from the library server to a local library, it takes a good while, probably because it finishes the sync process before changing, and furthermore it loads all four cores 100% at the end of the process, which "hangs" the entire system a little while. How about changing to the local library immediately, and finish the syncing in the background? This is just a more or less random example, but I feel in many cases when a very CPU/network-intensive task is done, it would be better to do it in the background somewhat slower, and not lock up the entire UI. A bit more focus on having the program be nice and responcive the times tasks which takes several seconds are performed.

[glynor]

Changing Libraries is...

Basically ripping 1/2 the "brain" out of Media Center and doing a live transplant.  It isn't the most stable operation in the world (until MC19 I had a common problem that MC would crash entirely while switching Libraries).

I'm not sure what the heck makes it get hung up sometimes.  Not sure it is the sync at all, though maybe you're right.  I've seen it get hung up, though, when switching between two local Libraries.

But, don't discount what you're doing.  MC cannot run at all without a valid Library loaded.  That is a huge amount of the "application" that is being live swapped out on the fly.  Most other similar applications (iTunes, Lightroom, etc) make you restart the application entirely when doing something akin to what it is doing.  So... They probably could make the process better, but I don't think it'll ever be "quick".

Also, the need to switch Libraries at all is something of an edge case (perhaps a more common one than others, but still not super necessary).  You may want to reconsider your need to switch Libraries in the first place.  There are absolutely places where it makes sense (I use multiple Libraries for some purposes myself), but there are many others where it doesn't make sense, and the same thing (or better) can be accomplished by modifying your Media Views instead.

[glynor]

You may also want to review:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_Network_and_Slow_Storage

[flac.rules]

Well, changing the library is just an example i picked because it is easily reproducible. The point is that some actions take a long time, and it is not always necessary to finish them before being able to do other things. The actions that takes a long time should in a lesser degree freeze up the whole program, or use 100% load on all cores. It makes the whole thing sluggish, a higher priority of keeping the UI "alive" would be nice in some instances.

[glynor]

I understand.

However, MC is very heavily multi-threaded, and does not generally become unresponsive for me, and it certainly does not peg the CPU core unless it is actually doing something pretty "heavy duty" (like transcoding video, or converting audio).  There are a few, specific exceptions where it does become unresponsive that I know of (copying files by drag-dropping to the Desktop, is one example I know of) but not that many.

What you're describing sounds more like a problem, than "normal".  It sounds to me exactly like issues I've seen myself when having issues with:

1. Interference by an anti-virus application
2. The issues described in the external and network disks link I posted above.

There are solutions for both of these issues.

If you are pretty sure the exact same actions triggers the exact same behavior every time, please provide specifics, so that if they do need to optimize something, they can.  General "it needs to be X better" aren't very helpful, and don't indicate whether what you're seeing is expected and normal, or something specific to your system(s).