Hello.
I'm looking for a way to compare lossless audio CD rips of albums (different pressings/releases) to remove duplicates.
Thinking about software that shows how much do tracks differ (in % or audio characteristics/graphics? I'm not that experienced in audio)
Thanks.
You culd try to check for the best DR (Dynamic Range) files you can find. Those are (usually!) the best ones to keep.
I'd say that "different pressings" are not the same as "different releases" ...
foobar2000 can bit-compare and (usually-ish) identify tracks that are the same except offset (meaning, you would have gotten the same bits if the track boundaries were not a few samples off, which is very often the case for different pressings of the same audio). But you need to know what to compare, it cannot scan.
Dupeguru, http://www.hardcoded.net/dupeguru_me/ can scan for identicals.
Far from perfect - outright stupid at times, I'd say - is Similarity, http://www.similarityapp.com . It uses "acoustic fingerprints" but - as far as I can tell - only selects pieces of the track. But putting it to high precision and allowing for a percent different track lengths, should give you a fairly good indication.
Of course, if the computer is digitally-comparing bytes, the files have to be lossless. You and I could rip the same song from the same CD to MP3 and if we're using different settings or different versions of LAME the bytes won't match.
....Personally, I don't remove duplicates because most of my music is organized by album and I don't want albums with missing songs.
I've got 5 copies of (Don't Fear) The Reaper... I always notice that when I sort by title because the songs that start with parenthesis sort to the top of the list. They are all from "various artist" albums and I assume they are all the same original recording, except one is shortened by about 1 minute. (And, one of those copies is an intentional duplicate in a "Halloween" folder... I don't want to tag my all of my Halloween-appropriate songs as "Halloween", so I keep duplicates in a separate folder, and these duplicates are tagged "Halloween".)
foobar2000 with plugin foo_biometric (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,65185.0.html)
Hello.
I'm looking for a way to compare lossless audio CD rips of albums (different pressings/releases) to remove duplicates.
Thinking about software that shows how much do tracks differ (in % or audio characteristics/graphics? I'm not that experienced in audio)
Thanks.
I tried this retrieval, and it appeared that one or more of the hits may help you:
https://sourceforge.net/directory/os:windows/?q=audio%20comparison (https://sourceforge.net/directory/os:windows/?q=audio%20comparison)
....Personally, I don't remove duplicates because most of my music is organized by album and I don't want albums with missing songs.
The same here. But I have removed a few duplicate
albums that were just different pressings up to offset. (How did I get those? Bought a few collections.)
Foobar bit-compare and biometric plugins work. Coupled with Similarity is all I need I think.
But I have removed a few duplicate albums that were just different pressings up to offset.
That's the goal. However I'd also like to find out how to choose the only one copy from several that differ, since I'm listening only to one copy of an album anyway (chosen manually by date of release, ear and track lengths), the rest are useless to store. Any common parameters?
(Dynamic Range)
Like this one.
Also, using foobar2000's Dynamic Range Meter plugin and submitting the results to the Dynamic Range Database (http://dr.loudness-war.info/) may give you what you're after.
However I'd also like to find out how to choose the only one copy from several that differ, since I'm listening only to one copy of an album anyway
You just told us how you are choosing:
(chosen manually by date of release, ear and track lengths)
But, now you're talking about choosing
albums?
If you're going to measure & choose by dynamic range, or other characteristics that you can hear, then you probably want to choose the one that sounds best (to you) overall.
Any common parameters?
Two releases with the same CDDB Disc ID are more likely to be the same master than two who are not. I think though, that I have encountered same-TOC albums of different masterings/mixes ...
MusicBrainz can help to identify different versions of quite a few albums as well.