CavesOfTQLT Wrote: > Concerning duplicate tracks; if I've got R.E.M's Everybody Hurts* on > one of their albums, and I've also got the _same_ track on a > compilation, and _another_ on another compilation, that's three copies > taking up space, whether that space is valuable or not.
I fully understand your situation, and I myself was thinking this the last time it came to buy a new hard drive or delete stuff. But you seem to be using the phrase "duplicate" without giving an exact definition of what you mean. Duplicate audio in terms of MP3 or other lossy files is "Yeah, it's the same length, it starts the same, ends the same, sounds the same" - that's because the MP3 user has already decided "almost" is as acceptable enough for him as "same as" by definition of using a lossy format. But you my friend have already made one wiser choice than most in using FLAC and accepting the extra HD space that comes with it for the benefit of proper CD quality audio. Mr MP3 can say "I have 20,000 tracks, and none are dupes because I deleted all those". You can say "I have 20,000 tracks, maybe 5000 of them are pretty much the same but at least I know all my albums are lossless as I have not mixed and matched tracks with different md5 fingerprints". The FLAC format itself can easily tell you if two files are duplicates by looking at the audio md5 fingerprints. By replacing carefully ripped tracks with versions that merely sound the same (and are not exactly the same) might be freeing up some space but is also contaminating your FLAC collection and no longer do you have bit-for-bit copies of some albums. And also, whilst a saving of 5 gigabytes for a user with MP3's is a hell of a lot, for a FLAC user it's just 20 albums. With the time needed and the small saving (in terms of albums, not bytes) and the fact that you will be contaminating your lossless collection I ask is it worth it? I applaud your idea, however I think it's more of a solution to gain space from a lossy collection. If ever I came across two FLAC files that were exactly the same I of course would like to use a feature like this, but as I said earlier with a growing collection of 20,000+ I haven't yet - and I do have about 20 different versions of some songs that sound the same to me and would no doubt be picked up by your MMM software as "dupes". -- Jim _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
