Need help with performance in Project Outfox

Hello, so I'm using the Starlight theme in Project Outfox and I *almost* have it working just the way I want it but not yet. I'm having two primary issues that I need to solve. I keep my fps on and I monitor that all the time and 98% of the time it stays at 120fps. One area where it dips hard is if I'm in song select and I hold down the button to scroll through the song list pretty fast. sometimes if I scroll fast, it will stay at a high fps so the scrolling remains smooth. Other times it dips down in the 20-30's and the scrolling is way less smooth. I don't have the exact specs of my my pc but it should be way more powerful than I need for this game. for reference I have V-Sync turned on in game, it's kept in fullscreen mode and I'm also using the nvidia gsync feature. I also have a lot of songs (all the songs from 1st-A3) so it might be the data transfer slowing it down. I'm playing off a 5TB external SSD, the one unknown I have there is if the data transfer from the usb to the computer might be slowing it down. My other question is in regards to when I'm playing. The game runs pretty smooth for the most part but every now and then there is a *small* hiccup. Not very noticeable, but it want it running buttery smooth 24/7. Does anyone have any general ideas?

That's a general StepMania issue, which Outfox is a fork of.

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So the choppy song scrolling is gonna be an issue in any version of Stepmania I use, no matter what I do to it?

The only thing I can think of the solution is using the thumbnail images (smaller jacket image files) for each song for themes that use jackets in music wheel. I'm not sure or don't remember if DDR XX Starlight v2.0 theme has it.