I have downloaded other GOTD duplicate programs but this one says it's geared for music so I thought I'd try it.
Running on XPsp3, loaded in seconds, activation went smoothly and it showed up as a personal license after I restarted the program.

Ran the program... took 3:45 seconds to go through 5,763 songs. Not bad really.
The interface is very clear and easy to use. You can even move some of the headers around to show what is important to you. It found 95 duplicate files. I went through them just to check to make sure they were dups. Turns out they were and the found dups were all located in other folders. Saved 369 megs it said once deleted.

The only Cons I have is after I clicked the tab to delete the dups, it came up with an error message... "Music Duplicate Remover" "External Exceptin 80000003." What ever that means. It did delete the files, but left 6 stragelers behind. I had to hit delete once more to clear them.

Other than that, it does what it is suppose to, fast and very easy to use. I'm going to keep it. Thanks GOTD for all you give us.
The WindWalker

WindWalker  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+77)

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Hum, I've just tested Music Duplicate Remover and I must say that it's a very bad product.

I have simply copied some tracks elsewhere in my music collection. The files are therefore EXACT duplicates, except that I have modified some of the tags. (I have added a "comment" tag in the copied files). And MDR has recognized NONE OF THEN as dupes!

Also, I have two identical tracks in two different formats (MP3 and OGG), and again MDR has not found them.

It has found only one dupe (this one was correct) in my entire music collection. I'm sure I have at least 100 dupes (correctly found by Similarity), and several short versions of longer tracks. None of them were found bu MDR.

Furthermore, it is impossible to compare two group of files together. (For example, I would like to compare a folder with the files in another folder, but not search for the dupes in the same folder.) That's not possible, and it's a major limitation. (Similarity has the same limitation, but Audio Comparer, given here previously, can do that.)

MDR processes the files very quickly, but since the results are not accurate at all, it's not surprising.

Don't waste your time in installing this software, and use Similarity instead. The free version is already much more powerful than this GOTD, and the commercial version costs $5 more, but it is really excellent, and suitable for professionals. Also, it can process all audio formats (if you have the right codec), unlike MDR, limited to 7 formats.

r0lZ  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+40)

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An excellent semi-free alternative is Similarity: http://www.music-similarity.com/
The free version has some limitations, but is great anyway. It uses several algorithms, including a user supported online database. But it cannot compare a group of files with another group, which makes it difficult to use to check if the tracks you are about to add in your collection has dupes.

@ #4 Barry: Glary Utilities is not at all a similar tool. Take in mind that if you change a single byte in a file, it will not be considered as a dupe any more. Most music files have tags, and if you change, say, the title of the track in the tag, it will be considered as different by Glary. Also, as you said, a file encoded in a different format or with another bitrate is also completely different. But with tools like this GOTD or Similarity, you can find them anyway.
They *should* also be able to find the tracks that are shorter versions of longer versions (such as the single version of an album track), but of course, they should indicate that the dupe is a subset of the other file. (I haven't checked if Music Duplicate Remover can do that, but Similarity can.)

r0lZ  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+38)

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If you have a music collection that is NOT ID tagged be very careful with this program. Be sure to expand all elements and verify each track it thinks is a duplicate before you delete. It is not able to see any difference between Bach and folk tunes if the bitrate and file sizes are fairly similar. I guess the "listening" ability is an aspirational feature designed to attract customers rather than deliver results.

If it were not free today I would have asked for my money back.

Mugwah  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+33)

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SORRY! I must confess that I was wrong (in post #11).

For whatever reason, the default setting is to search files by ID3 tags ONLY! Of course, unless the tags are exactly identical, MDR cannot find the dupes. In the other hand, it consider as dupes the files that have the same tags, so if your music collection is not correctly tagged, it cannot work properly.

I don't understand why that option is the default, as it is pretty useless and somewhat dangerous. Furthermore, it searches some tags that should not be taken into account (for example, the track number, so, if you have the same track in two albums, it cannot find them as dupes if they do not have the same track number). Luckily, it is possible to change the list of tags to search for in the options.

I redid some tests with the option to search by Music only, and of course the process was much longer, but much more accurate. It has found several real dupes, and with this first test, it has not found false positives.

I said also that it is impossible to find the dupes across folders. That's still true, but there are options to group the files by folder. You can therefore ask the program to remove the dupes preferably from one specific folder, and keep them in your music collection folder. That's not as powerful as I wish, but it's not so bad.

I strongly suggest to change immediately the compare method (in the Search Options tab of the left pane), and to redo the tests. This GOTD is not bad, although not as powerful as Similarity.

r0lZ  –  14 years ago  –  Βρήκατε αυτό το σχόλιο χρήσιμο? ναι | όχι (+28)

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