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Topic: Do you dedupe your library? (Read 9169 times) previous topic - next topic
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Do you dedupe your library?

Purely out of curiosity, I'm wondering: do any of you dedupe your libraries?  Let's say you have a couple of original albums and a compilation from the same artist, and the compilation features a few songs from the other two, as well as some from albums you don't own.  Do you delete the duplicate tracks?  What if they're not quite identical, but sound virtually the same?  What if one's from a digital source, and one from an analog, or they have different compression factors (either bitwise or due to the "loudness wars")?

I've been debating whether to delete all extra copies of songs in my collection, which amount to 3GB or more of duplicate data; but doing so would leave me with compilation albums that look like Swiss cheese.  On top of that, I've already ReplayGained on the album level, so would need to decide whether to do so again.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #1 –
Absolutely not. Different albums, different pressings etc. (I don't keep any compilation).

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #2 –
Yes, because even though it will leave holes in a compilation album, it is traded off having the same track listed twice if listing all tracks by that artist.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #3 –
No. I can't think of a single good reason to do so.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #4 –
no. i do mark some duplicates with a rating of 1 so foobar and the foo_skip component skips over them. given i do that, you might argue i'm bonkers to keep them but i still like seeing them in my playlists and i don't want to delete them.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #5 –
This is not a simple "yes I do"/"no I don't" answer; it is conditional on many levels. . .

Me personally, I listen to music from an 'audiophile' perspective.
If I have multiple releases of the same "thing", I keep them all so I can make comparison listens.
If I was not this type of aficionado, maybe I would "clean out the house" occasionally and delete dupes, keeping the one I like best.

Recently, I did gather all items I had of a particular artist and decided to "clean out the house" and delete dupes, but this was a special case. . .

The artist was Gary Glitter (and the Glitter Band).
My objective was to create THE definitive compilation album of his music having best [subjective] audio quality and having all his (and his band's) greatest hits all in one release.
Such a release does not officially exist. There are many releases of his music all over the internet but they all have some quality which is less than perfect to my ears.

On my computer, after many years of collecting, I had amassed a huge collection of this official Gary Glitter material, and I enjoy playing his tunes regularly in foobar2000,
and I was getting tired of trying to remember which track from which album was my favourite listen when choosing amongst a mass of "dupes".

So, I put my critical cap on and decided to compile my own "greatest hits" album.
After a number of days of effort, I narrowed it down to 43 hand selected tracks from four releases....with a little dash of "remastering" by me.

I christened my unofficial album and gave it a name ......and I created a 'folder.jpg' for it .....and I created a 'folder.txt' file for it

.....and I deleted all other Gary Glitter items on my computer.

FYI, here is my 'folder.txt':
Quote
Gary Glitter and The Glitter Band  --  43 Hits in Best Audio Quality  (2014)

Unofficial compilation -- Various Media Sources -- Compiled and Remastered by me

Popular; Pop; Pop-Rock; Dance-Pop; Glam-Rock; Disco; Classic Hits


A personal 'best' selection of every Gary Glitter-related track on my computer.
To be selected, the track needed to pass three criteria:
(1) Quality tune; I like the song and never get tired of listening to it.
(2) Quality sound; Playback of this item through my speakers is the best.
(3) Quality format: Lossless CD release targets only.

Regarding (1), the song needed to be memorable and an exciting example of the glory days of GG and The Glitter Band. If the song did not hit my 'sweet spot' then I discarded it, no matter how good the sound quality. In the end, this left me with 43 unique lovable tracks.

Regarding (2), as you may know, most of Gary Glitter's releases are a variation of the same set of tunes. Therefore I was comparing many instances of the same song. Choosing the best sounding song was not as hard as I thought; it was quite easy in fact. The reason is because.....most CD releases of Gary Glitter material are absolutely crap sounding!!

Regarding (3), being an audiophile and a big fan of vinyl, it would have been nice if I also had some HQ vinyl rips of original LP/EP pressings to use as release sources. But unfortunately I don't have any; everything here was chosen from CD releases from the 1980s and 1990s. I suppose the facts become a bit clearer if you read up on Gary Glitter's fate.

From WIKIPEDIA---"...his long and highly successful career was ended in the late 1990s by repeated revelations and criminal convictions for possession of child pornography and (in the 2000s) for child sexual abuse."---With this in mind, I can understand why the vast majority of vinyl rippers would rather ignore him and his creative output.

Personally speaking, I can live with such facts but still like his artistic creation. Maybe I have got a "forgiving" personality and do not want to join the hating witchhunt even if 99% of the world wants to. Maybe it's the libertarian in me which allows the life and times of people involved in the arts to have a "special pass" or "artistic licence" no matter what. Film director 'Roman Polanski' comes into my mind here too. However in Gary's case, his immense popularity across all age spectrums made things VERY uncomfortable for polite society and drew the public curtain down on his career in an abruptly dramatic way, forever stigmatizing him as a prominent figure of hate and revulsion.

Do not waste your time trying to find the ultimate Gary Glitter greatest hits album, it doesn't exist; the vast majority of GG releases have abysmal sound quality or are brickwalled loud.
The custom compilation here is THE ultimate representation of Gary and his band's music from a sound quality and selection perspective (as of March 2014).



TRACKS ====================================================================

"Glitter (1972)" / DOJO CD 100 / Complete Album
   01 ---- Rock And Roll Part 1
   02 ---- Baby Please Don't Go
   03 ---- The Wanderer
   04 ---- I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock And Roll)
   05 ---- Ain't That A Shame
   06 ---- School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell)
   07 ---- Rock On
   08 ---- Donna
   09 ---- The Famous Instigator
   10 ---- The Clapping Song
   11 ---- Shaky Sue
   12 ---- Rock And Roll Part 2
   Bounus Tracks
   13 ---- I'm The Leader Of The Gang
   14 ---- It's Not A Lot
   15 ---- Just Fancy That
   16 ---- Thank You Baby For Myself
 
"Touch Me (1974)" / DOJO CD 200 / Complete Album
   17 ---- Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)
   18 ---- Come On, Come In, Get On
   19 ---- Happy Birthday
   20 ---- Hard On Me
   21 ---- To Know You Is To Love You
   22 ---- Money Honey
   23 ---- Hello Hello, I'm Back Again
   24 ---- Sidewalk Sinner
   25 ---- Didn't I Do It Right
   26 ---- Lonely Boy
   27 ---- Hold On To What You Got
   28 ---- I.O.U.
   Bonus Tracks
   29 ---- Oh Yes You're Beautiful
   30 ---- I Would If I Could But I Cant't
   31 ---- I'm Right, You're Wrong, I Win
   32 ---- I'll Carry Your Picture Everywhere
 
"The Ultimate Gary Glitter: 25 Years Of Hits (1997)" / Snapper GGCD 001 / Selected Tracks
   33 ---- I Love You Love Me Love
   34 ---- Let's Get Together Again (The Glitter Band)
   35 ---- Doing Alright With The Boys
   36 ---- Always Yours
   37 ---- Angel Face (The Glitter Band)
   38 ---- Love Like You And Me
   39 ---- Remember Me This Way
   40 ---- You Belong To Me
   41 ---- Goodbye My Love (The Glitter Band)
   42 ---- All That Glitters (Medley)
 
"Starke Zeiten (1988)" / Ariola 259 170 / One Track
   43 ---- The Tears I Cried (The Glitter Band)



RIPINFO ===================================================================

Various Media Sources -- Compiled and Remastered by me


#####-- Source material --#####

  * Tracks 1-16 from album "Glitter (1972)", CD, Dojo Ltd. DOJO CD 100 (GBR), Bonus Tracks (1996)

  * Tracks 17-32 from album "Touch Me (1974)", CD, Dojo Ltd. DOJO CD 200 (GBR), Bonus Tracks (1996)

  * Tracks 33-42 from compilation "The Ultimate Gary Glitter: 25 Years Of Hits (1997)", 2-CD, Snapper Music GGCD 001 (GBR)

  * Track 43 from compilation "Starke Zeiten (1988)", CD, Ariola 259 170 (DEU)

#####-- Audio Processing using Goldwave audio editor --#####

  * Tracks 1-42
    - Effect > Volume > Maximize Volume > Preset: Full dynamic range
   
  * Track 43:
    - Effect > Filter > Parametric EQ > Preset: 5 band + manually boost and widen bass and mid bands
    - Effect > Compressor/Expander > Preset: Reduce peaks
    - Effect > Volume > Maximize Volume > Preset: Full dynamic range + extra 0.70 dB

#####-- Audio Processing using foobar2000 audio player --#####

  * Tagging + Apply ReplayGain (album) to all tracks

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: derty2 on
This is not a simple "yes I do"/"no I don't" answer; it is conditional on many levels. . .

I think that for most people it's a very simple 'yes' or 'no' question. You either pick your nose or you don't. I'ts not a question of whether or not you use a hanky.

Quote
Recently, I did gather all items I had of a particular artist and decided to "clean out the house" and delete dupes, but this was a special case. . .

The artist was Gary Glitter (and the Glitter Band).
My objective was to create THE definitive compilation album of his music having best [subjective] audio quality and having all his (and his band's) greatest hits all in one release.
Such a release does not officially exist. There are many releases of his music all over the internet but they all have some quality which is less than perfect to my ears.

That's exactly what playlists are for.

If I really needed it to look like an album and show up in my albums list, then I'd copy the tracks to a new folder, renumber and retag the album name and add some cover art. I can't see any reason to delete the original albums.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: derty2 on
Recently, I did gather all items I had of a particular artist and decided to "clean out the house" and delete dupes, but this was a special case. . .

The artist was Gary Glitter (and the Glitter Band).


if i wanted give an example, i wouldn't have chosen an artist that was a convicted paedophile.  also, some of those song titles are slightly disturbing given what we know now.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: BFG on
Purely out of curiosity, I'm wondering: do any of you dedupe your libraries?  Let's say you have a couple of original albums and a compilation from the same artist, and the compilation features a few songs from the other two, as well as some from albums you don't own.  Do you delete the duplicate tracks?  What if they're not quite identical, but sound virtually the same?  What if one's from a digital source, and one from an analog, or they have different compression factors (either bitwise or due to the "loudness wars")?

I've been debating whether to delete all extra copies of songs in my collection, which amount to 3GB or more of duplicate data; but doing so would leave me with compilation albums that look like Swiss cheese.  On top of that, I've already ReplayGained on the album level, so would need to decide whether to do so again.


Do you delete the duplicate tracks? Yes.
What if they're not quite identical, but sound virtually the same? I leave them only if they considerably differ in length and sounding.
What if one's from a digital source, and one from an analog, or they have different compression factors (either bitwise or due to the "loudness wars")? I have no audio from an analog source whatsoever.

I'm afraid I will draw a lot of anger and hatred by saying these, but people are bats*t crazy. Why the hell do you even store all the tracks of your favorite band? Do you really love all of them?

Out of 4K songs/tracks/audios that I have, I only have maybe a dozen of full albums that I fully enjoy (I love every track from them without comprises). As for other albums I always comb them and delete the tracks I don't really like. What's the point of gathering the waste you don't really enjoy? To boast that you have a > 100GB collection of audio? What for?

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: birdie on
I'm afraid I will draw a lot of anger and hatred by saying these, but people are bats*t crazy. Why the hell do you even store all the tracks of your favorite band? Do you really love all of them?

Out of 4K songs/tracks/audios that I have, I only have maybe a dozen of full albums that I fully enjoy (I love every track from them without comprises). As for other albums I always comb them and delete the tracks I don't really like. What's the point of gathering the waste you don't really enjoy? To boast that you have a > 100GB collection of audio? What for?

This is some of the most presumptuous and pretentious nonsense I’ve ever read! At least you’re self-aware enough to know people are going to be irked by it, but it remains for you to graduate to the point where you realise why they’d be justified to do so, rather than interpreting it as further evidence of their inferiority.

Well, let’s break it down:

Congratulations to you for having the necessary level of decisiveness to decree once and for all that you’ll never want to listen to a particular track, but most people keep them around just in case
(A1) they decide later to try some tracks they hadn’t given enough time to in the past,
(A2) their opinion of such songs ends up changing—speaking from personal experience of tracks I didn’t initially enjoy much but that one day became favourites—, or simply
(B) because they don’t see a point in actively fragmenting an album—which you apparently view as some sort of noble mission that can only be ignored by the insane and/or troglodytes.

And another thing… How does not deleting everything at every possible opportunity mean that all of those other people have a huge collection amounting to 2 or 3 digits of gigabytes? Even if they do, how do you know they don’t listen to it all? Even if they don’t, who are you to say they must delete things they don’t listen to enough to meet your personal standards?

I mean really, wow, you should probably re-evaluate your unenlightened assumptions about all other people, or at the very least, keep them to yourself.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: birdie on
I'm afraid I will draw a lot of anger and hatred by saying these, but people are bats*t crazy. Why the hell do you even store all the tracks of your favorite band? Do you really love all of them?
One gigabyte (1000 MB) of space is 4 Euro cents, 0.04€. Let's say I want to dedupe tracks where each track is stored as a lossless FLAC file weighing an average 40 MB. Also, if I assume I dedupe one track in 30 seconds on average, that means I can dedupe 120 tracks per hour. That's a saving of 20 euro cents, 0.20€, per hour. Deduping lossy files has an even worse turnaround value. I can easily say (for myself) that my free time is worth more than that, not even considering the boring and repetitive task I'd have been doing for an hour.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #11 –
My ex would "trim" songs by purportedly her favorite bands. Drove me nuts as we shared at least some taste in music.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: BFG on
Let's say you have a couple of original albums and a compilation from the same artist, and the compilation features a few songs from the other two, as well as some from albums you don't own.  Do you delete the duplicate tracks?  What if they're not quite identical, but sound virtually the same?

I always leave the lossless sources intact - be it albums or compilations or whatever. But when making a portable copy of a compilation album I like to remove any songs already present in the original album, provided I have also transferred that album in question. (Hope that's phrased clearly...)

Quote
What if one's from a digital source, and one from an analog, or they have different compression factors (either bitwise or due to the "loudness wars")?

No analog sources in my collection, but I'll transfer whichever version I like most or sounds better for me.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #13 –
no "true" dups allowed in mine. I give precedence to real albums over comps, assuming I have real albums by the artist. I figure I can recreate a compilation via playlists or comments if I really wanted to. I often grab music to listen to in the car/work by artist so I don't want dups when I'm listening.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: BFG on
do any of you dedupe your libraries?


If I have two bit-identical - possibly modulo offset - CDs ripped, then one of them will be removed.


Quote from: BFG on
Let's say you have a couple of original albums and a compilation from the same artist


I sort and display by directory structure, using a directory naming scheme chosen for the purpose.  That means a track like Black Sabbath: Iron Man shows up in my fb2k album list view like the folders do, collated by alphabet:

Black Sabbath {1970} Paranoid [and another one for the remaster]
Black Sabbath {1982} Live Evil
Black Sabbath {1998} Reunion
Black Sabbath {1999} Black Mass
Black Sabbath {2002} Past Lives
... and then in tribute albums, and then at the end of the alphabet, in various artists compilations.

Don't see why I should delete any of them.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #15 –
Somehow my photos are more likely to end up with duplicates than my music. fslint does the job nicely.

music: If I digitised an LP, and later get a CD or FLAC version of it, I keep both. I can only play up to 24/96: at the moment, I have some 24/192 files which are kept on the principle of always keeping the source. I'm thinking of hiving them off to the backup disks.

If I change the directory structure on the machine, duplicates occur on the backup disks. fslint helps me find and delete them.

Although my computer is tidier than my desk or house, I am not a manic housekeeper: I just keep a check on these things occasionally.

The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: spoon on
Yes, because even though it will leave holes in a compilation album, it is traded off having the same track listed twice if listing all tracks by that artist.
My list of all Beatles tracks would make you weep then.

I can't be bothered.

It does amaze me how many copies of some tracks I have though. I've clearly bought too many 1980s and 1990s compilations! Yet even removing the duplicates from them makes no sense to me. I might still want to listen to the compilation as-is: why butcher it by deleting duplicates, and then try to re-create it with a playlist? Different compilations have (sometimes radically) different mastering - this is geekily interesting to compare, and also jarring if you suddenly cut in one track from a different compilation.

If I wanted to create my own definitive compilations with some actual changes to the audio, that would create another "duplicate", not remove something I already had.

It's not (for once) an obsessive collector mentality - it's just convenience.


I think these threads are only useful if they help people think of something (either for or against) that they wouldn't have thought of otherwise, and that helps them make the right decision for them. No point just telling people they're right or wrong. People use their music collections in different ways.

Cheers,
David.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
It does amaze me how many copies of some tracks I have though. I've clearly bought too many 1980s and 1990s compilations!

I remember there was a CD going around in the 90s that had all the Beatles original albums, and all the compilations on a single disc that ran as an app on the PC. Pre the rise of MP3, it used MS-ADPCM. It had to be deduped to get it all to fit so there were no (or at least very few) mix variations, but it was a pretty amazing feat at the time.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: birdie on
I'm afraid I will draw a lot of anger and hatred by saying these, but people are bats*t crazy. Why the hell do you even store all the tracks of your favorite band? Do you really love all of them?


No anger or hatred, it's just a stupid thing to say.

I don't love every track but if I don't want to play a track I don't have to. I do however want all my CDs ripped. Why would I only rip part of it?

To the OP, no I don't de-dupe. I rip and keep albums whether they're compilations or not.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #20 –
Quote
Do you dedupe your library?

Nope

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #23 –
I started my digital collection in 1999, and my disk space was fairly limited until about 2006. Since I have a large physical collection, far too much to keep on the size of drives we were working with back then, many sacrifices were inevitably made. Rather than building a collection of full release rips from which I'd select my favorites from via carefully managed playlists, I was forced to curate a collection of just my favorite tracks. So of course I removed duplicates! And I only ripped what I knew I would be listening to. Careful organization of the loose tracks into a folder hierarchy eliminated the need for playlist maintenance or even tagging.

However, disk space isn't so tight anymore, so I keep lossless rips of full releases around, separate from my main listening library of 40 thousand loose tracks. I also like to at least rip full releases even when I don't want all the tracks, just so that I can get an accurate ReplayGain album scan.

In recent years, I've been doing a lot of comparing of masterings. Instead of keeping only one, I now keep all of my favorites, even if it means keeping multiple copies of some tracks when I can't decide which mastering I like better. I'm also increasingly interested in keeping multiple versions. I used to only keep one representative version of each song (usually an extended version or a favorite remix), but I now keep every edit, fade, album version, extended version, and original-era remix, as long as I like it.

Do you dedupe your library?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: bandpass on
I remember there was a CD going around in the 90s that had all the Beatles original albums, and all the compilations on a single disc that ran as an app on the PC.

I remember that one as well! No idea how I came to get a copy, but I played it a LOT around twelve years ago (I was a child back then...). It was pretty nicely done as well, with pictures, covers and lyrics.

Sorry for the off-topic remembrance...