Finding Duplicate MP3's

[Roderunner]

Hi Folks,
I have very many files in MP3 format so they will play in my car.
I have found there are some duplicate songs from different artists.
I tried ALLDup, Duplicate Cleaner Free, Similarity, Duplicate Music Fles Finder and Easy Duplicate Finder on Lifewire web site.
None of them worked for me after 2 days of trying.
I used Ccleaner but it would only show files if the track numbers & names matched. If files with the same name and had different track number it never worked.
e.g.
03 The Lucky One.mp3 E:\Corsa MP3'S\CD1\Alison Krauss\Live\Alison Krauss - Live CD1 7.32 MB 13/07/2013 12:31:09
03 The Lucky One.mp3 E:\Corsa MP3'S\CD1\Alison Krauss\New Favorite 7.33 MB 13/07/2013 12:31:54
-
Do you know any others I could try?

[BobH]

I can't help, George; but if you find software that works, please post here as I, too, have a need.

[viking33]

I use Duplicate File Finder Pro Plus, which does all I need. Give it a try at:

FREE

[ChrisGreaves]

I have very many files in MP3 format so they will play in my car.

Hi RodeRunner.
I've been dwelling on this for six years, also doing some work on it.

To my mind it all comes down to what we mean by "duplicate", and this argument would apply to, say, DOCument files as well as MP3 files and so on.

Two MP3-type files of the same byte size and content would be considered duplicates regardless of name, path and any other details, right?
Thus "T:\Music\Calm\Classical\Instrumental\Beethoven\Concerto pour piano n°5, Sonate pour piano n°17 -la tempète-\Concerto pour piano n°5, Sonate pour piano n°17 -la tempète- - 5 - 03 - Rondo - Allegro.mp3" and "B:\MyCopy\Movement.Mp4" are duplicates if they sound the same when we play them back in WinAmp. I would want to delete one of the files if I wanted unique tracks on my jukebox.

But what about "The Gondoliers (Act 1) - D'Oyly Carte (1961)(w Dialog) - Godfrey, Reed - G&S.mp3" and "The Gondoliers (Act 1) - Sir Malcolm Sargent - Gilbert & Sullivan.mp3"? To me they are duplicates, but to a music purist a Sargent recording is different in tempo from a D'Oyly Carte, right? For a sing-along on a memory key in the rental car I'd want only one of them, but as a lover of G&S I'd want both on my jukebox at home.

Then we dig into the metadata frames at the head of the MP3 files. Do different sampling rates count? Genre? Year? We are at the mercy of whoever put the tags in place. And what standard of tags are we using - id3v2.4.0; Id3v2.3.0; id3v2-00 - and on and on and on.

I have accumulated over one hundred files (documents, mainly) in struggling to make some sort of useful (to me) definition of "duplicate" that I am prepared to use to attack my 17,000 MP3 tracks.

I doubt that any commercial product will satisfy you unless it is a rules-based system because there are just too many definitions of what a "duplicate file" can be.

Cheers
Chris

[Rudi]

A bit of a manual way could be to upload the named string into Excel and use conditional formatting and sorting to highlight/locate and group the strings. From there you can find and delete the duplicate files. If you have 100's of duplicates, are you sure you have depleted options in those duplicate finder apps that attempt to file close matches on file names, or finding matches on partial strings in the file names?

[Roderunner]

Hi All,
the duplicate file finders as in my original post on LifeWire web site, did find them but very many more that were not .mp3. There was also no way to make a copy of its findings.
The file suggested by Bob 'Viking33' never found any mp3 files.
My best so far is Ccleaner. It was done on my Laptop as the only MP3's I have are on a portable HDD which is where my music is.
My image shows how it was set. My attached zip file is only 3.92KB. It demonstrates the duplicates which are all of the same track number and name. There is one song that has this and another with a different track number, the track is caled 'Rain'.

Duplicates .zip

Ccleaner.png

[Roderunner]

A bit of a manual way could be to upload the named string into Excel and use conditional formatting and sorting to highlight/locate and group the strings. From there you can find and delete the duplicate files. If you have 100's of duplicates, are you sure you have depleted options in those duplicate finder apps that attempt to file close matches on file names, or finding matches on partial strings in the file names?

Hi Rudi, I don't have any Office files.

[Rudi]

Based on what you report George, I don't think any one application is going to find only and all duplicates. You may have to pick the one that provides you the best results initially and then work with that to eliminate the duplicates. Once no others are found you would probably have to eyeball the rest of the duplicates the app overlooked and delete them manually (or attempt to widen the criteria in the app to attempt locating further duplicates).

The only duplicates app I have worked with is: Duplicate Cleaner Free. This has always done a good job for me but I can't say have used it much for music files.

[Roderunner]

So far, I have found 28 duplicates using Ccleaner and will delete one of each as the files are played in 'Shuffle' mode in my car.
I still have other copies af all my music in other players that play albums I pick, Winamp and a multi media player connected to my tv.
More later.

[Roderunner]

Hi Again, I have been using this to find MP3 duplicates with a fair amount of success. My question is, how do I clear entrys for older searches?

RR.jpg

[Rudi]

Hi George,

If you click the drop-down and (without clicking) move your mouse over one of the items so that it highlights, you can then just press delete on the keyboard to remove that item. Windows 10 makes it easier to delete the whole lot with a ribbon button, but if you are in Windows 7, this is not available and to delete the whole list in one go you need to run a Regedit command. See this web page for details.

[Roderunner]

Rudi, your a genius, thanks very much.
When I followed your instructions, I found about 10 other search items I had used although only 3 (newest ones) appeared.