MuseHub issues

As mentioned in some recent posts I tried to move my Muse Sounds libraries to a larger SSD. I think most of the issues about that may now have been resolved.

To get straight to the MuseHub issues go to +++

Other background....
However investigating this has shown up some other problems. We run MacOS here, and on this machine one of us is the main user, and runs music software. The other user only uses the machine occasionally, and is not particularly interested in music, but just wants to do what are now considered simple tasks, email, editing, printing, browsing the web etc.

Gradually over the last year or so the machine has seemed to slow down quite a bit, but recently it took a big hit. This now firstly means that when the machine is started up it takes quite a long while to get to the login window, then when the password is provided it takes an inordinately long while to get started. Changing user ids - logging in by another user - also takes a very long while.

Part of the problem has been due to a gradual reduction in available file space - partly at least due to sound libraries stored on the main storage drive. Since I discovered that for music applications mostly the sound libraries can be stored on external storage, some or maybe most of the libraries have now been moved off to external SSDs. Until recently some of these may have been on slightly slower SSDs - but for the applications these have proved generally to be more than fast enough. Recently several large and fast SSDs have been added, and these can connect via USB C, and these appear to give good performance. If more SSDs need to be connected these can be connected by USB C splitter devices, which again seem to provide fast enough performance. Any slow peripherals are moved to slower USB ports or USB Hubs.

Apart from the sound libraries taking up space I discovered that many downloads came as zip files, which were also taking up space. Some people open zip files then delete them, but as I sometimes want to keep those in case I need them again, some have clogged up available storage space on the main storage drive. A recent more ruthless approach to deleting those files has been taken - though copies have been made to external drives in case of any failures.

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Muse Hub problems and settings
So finally we get to the Muse Hub issues. MuseHub if installed seems to affect all users - so if everyone using the machine wants to run music programs [DAWs, MuseScore etc.] that may be the desired behaviour. However if that is not the case, some users may be adversely affected, and not realise why. Given the extreme severity of the disruption this is a very significant problem.

Secondly, if MuseHub is set to run at Startup, this very probably explains one possible reason why the start up process is so lengthy. Another problem area might also be due to other startup programs, such as Native Instruments Kontakt - or any other program which might do checking on licences. As yet I can't be sure that problems are only due to MuseHub, but it's a strong suspicion.

Now I am turning off the MuseHub startup at login feature in the OS. Currently I'm still allowing it to run as a background process, but if the poor performance continues that will also be turned off.

Having MuseHub doing some updates and monitoring automatically may be useful for some - as updating of software and libraries can go on in the background - but for others this is a step too far. Also - it does not follow that everyone wishes to have all the apps and plugins checked and updated frequently if that is going to slow down everyday use. Some of the apps and plugins may just not be of interest even to a music oriented user - do I really care if there is an update to a fuzzy bass plugin app?