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Topic: App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music (Read 5136 times) previous topic - next topic
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App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

With a few hundred CDs ripped to MP3 files, I of course have what I'll loosely term "duplicates".  They may or may not be exact duplicates, but often times the same song is on multiple albums; one from the artist and one from a compilation CD (Journey & Journey's greatest hits, or Best Rock Songs of the Early 80's, etc.).  You get the idea.

What I'm hoping to find is a program that will
  • Locate similarly named files (ie; the duplicate songs)
  • Display song length, bitrate, and filesize
  • Optionally allow playing of each song
  • Copying of higher bitrate file over lower bitrate file if I so choose
  • Ability to retain certain tags from the destination file (Album for example)


I'm not sure if there would need to be more functionality, but off the top of my head, I'd need at least that much.  I realize there are sometimes "extended" versions of songs on certain CDs, and I may want to keep the lower quality version simply because it's a different version of the same song.

I've searched high and low, but haven't found anything like that yet.  Almost everything I've found allows the deletion of duplicates, even for music files, but I can't for the life of me figure out how that's useful other than to save 5MB here or there, and what good is an album with songs 2, 6, 9, and 11 missing?

Any thoughts/suggestions welcome, and thanks in advance.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #1 –
Quote from: airjrdn on
Copying of higher bitrate file over lower bitrate file if I so choose

Quote from: airjrdn on
but I can't for the life of me figure out how that's useful other than to save 5MB here or there

Why even go through the hassle of weeding out duplicates if savings are marginal at best? With appropriate tagging and playback software avoiding playback of duplicates is pretty easy. foobar2000 for example allows to remove duplicates from a playlist, and using filters anything is possible.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Kohlrabi on
Quote from: airjrdn on
Copying of higher bitrate file over lower bitrate file if I so choose

Quote from: airjrdn on
but I can't for the life of me figure out how that's useful other than to save 5MB here or there

Why even go through the hassle of weeding out duplicates if savings are marginal at best? With appropriate tagging and playback software avoiding playback of duplicates is pretty easy. foobar2000 for example allows to remove duplicates from a playlist, and using filters anything is possible.


Neither disk space savings nor limiting duplicate playback is the purpose.  What I want to do is upgrade all lower quality songs with higher quality ones if I have them so that when I listen to a particular album, I'm listening to the highest quality version I have of each song.

For example, I have some albums that were converted from old purchased cassettes that were never remade as CDs.  If the cassette has 15 songs on it, 12 of which I have CD rips of at 320kbps, I'd like to replace those 12 with the 320k versions so when listening to that album, I'm always hearing the better quality version when possible.

Does that make sense?

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #3 –
Higher bitrate does not always equal higher quality.  All other things being equal, I'd rather have a track that has higher dynamic range due to not being damaged by the loudness war than a track that has less dynamic range due to the loudness war.  A heavily clipped track would have a higher bitrate than a non-clipped track on the same vbr settings, yet would sound inferior.  Plus, newer encoders can provide higher quality at lower bitrates than older encoders in many cases.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #4 –
Check out PerfectTunes and its dedup function. Recently released by spoon of dbpoweramp fame.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #5 –
Quote from: garym on
Check out PerfectTunes and its dedup function. Recently released by spoon of dbpoweramp fame.


I did.  It didn't seem to have that functionality.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #6 –
Although it doesn’t offer all the features you listed, and I’m not sure if any single automatic solution will, perhaps foo_bestversion could help somehow.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #7 –
Quote from: airjrdn on
For example, I have some albums that were converted from old purchased cassettes that were never remade as CDs.  If the cassette has 15 songs on it, 12 of which I have CD rips of at 320kbps, I'd like to replace those 12 with the 320k versions so when listening to that album, I'm always hearing the better quality version when possible.
I would avoid mixing different masters/releases of albums, because they might sound very different, due to the different mastering. And level matching, i.e. achieving the same loudness on all tracks, will take a lot of effort. Are you sure the "low-quality" files are not good enough?
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Kohlrabi on
I would avoid mixing different masters/releases of albums, because they might sound very different, due to the different mastering.

Agreed, I was just about to post something in that spirit.

Moreover, pre-track gaps may differ between releases. (Admittedly, that's less big of a deal than loudness changes not envisioned by the creators of the release.)

Why don't you just rerip very low bitrate CDs? Or, if your musical taste is mainstreamish enough, purchase a subscription to iTunes Match or the like. It will typically replace entire releases with a higher bitrate version (~256 kbps AAC), not individual tracks.

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #9 –
The volume differences are probably one of the only reasons I can think of NOT to do what I'm contemplating.  I wouldn't mix recorded music with live performances obviously.

Re-ripping isn't always an option though, or I would simply do that.  Re-ripping (if that's even the right term) a cassette isn't going to produce the higher quality version a ripped CD would provide.

For example, an old cassette I had contained about 10 songs, 6 or so of which I also had on CD.  What I'm wondering is, when listening to that CD, do I want all low quality songs or would I prefer to listed to the 6 at higher quality, and only the 4 I don't have a better quality version of at the lower quality?

What do you guys think?  Would you want a consistent listening experience "within" an album?

What if you are searching for a song using iSub (iPhone app that uses Subsonic on the back-end) for example.  If I simply want to hear a song, or let a friend listen to it, do I want to stumble across an old cassette rip, or a 320k version?

App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #10 –
There are too many potential differences between the same track on different releases to satisfactorily replace one with another, in my opinion.

Loudness is the one that's been mentioned before, and comes to mind first. But there are dynamic range and equalization differences between different releases (even of the same album!). There may even be differences to the way a song is mixed. It may fade into or out of another adjacent song. It may have a different length of silence between tracks.

I would find it very jarring to be listening to (for example) a cassette or vinyl rip, then for one song to suddenly be from a CD rip, then the next track going back to the vinyl rip. Even though the CD track is technically of higher quality, it doesn't match the rest of the material.



App to Overwrite Lower Quality Music

Reply #11 –
All good points.  I'm not sure at this stage if I'll do it, but if I do, I'll post back with how I did it.