Gold license worth it for small setups?

[Tuchk]

Hello
I picked up a Gold license a few weeks back, mostly because I like the idea of backing smaller software teams when I use their stuff daily. What I expected was a smoother experience right away, but in reality my library (around 40k tracks on an external drive) still feels a bit sluggish at times. I noticed it’s worse when the drive has been sleeping or just reconnected, so maybe that’s part of it. I’m clearly no power user and I might have missed some obvious setting. I’ve tried a couple of basic tweaks but nothing dramatic so far. For those who’ve been using Gold longer, did you see real benefits over time or was it more about supporting the project?

[Lowlander]

The benefit is features and supporting future development.

As for speed, make sure the database files is on a fast drive as this has the most impact on overall performance.

Are just the media files on the external drive?