Some of the better features include being able to search through multiple folders or hard drives at once and compare files from all sources or just within the same folder. This level of precision sets this one apart from other duplicate file finders. On top of that, AllDup can compare files byte by byte as well as by file attributes and other normal criteria (such as name, extension, and size). What’s more is the ability to scan inside RAR and ZIP files, explicitly include or exclude file types and folders, and preview the music without exiting the software. There’s both a normal and portable version of this duplicate file finder. Its interface is easy to use and has an impressive range of options to fine-tune your search. The selection assistant is particularly useful for quickly marking files for deletion based on your criteria. Criteria can include matching audio tags like the artist, title, and album, as well as the genre, length, year, any comments, and others. Otherwise, you can have the search only look for duplicate audio data and ignore any tags. You can also use search filters that take into account the file’s creation and modified date, size, and file extension, plus search through Zipping archives. Once Duplicate Cleaner gives a list of results, use the selection assistant to mark what you want to be deleted. Some of those options include keeping the file that’s the longest, smallest, has the shortest name, or even deleting every duplicate but one. Similarity also looks at MP3 tags and has an experimental mode for deep scanning. Results are shown in the Results tab. Right-click files for options, such as to see a spectrum or sonogram analysis of the files to see how similar the files are. The program is compatible with a range of lossy and lossless audio formats such as MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ASF, APE, MPC, and others. The settings is where you decide which music files the program should scan for and if it should look through subfolders. Even though the program interface as a whole isn’t super up-to-date, the results are displayed side by side so that you can compare the size and name of the duplicate files, and select which ones should stay or go. Duplicate Music Files Finder also comes with a built-in set of tools for managing your files. For example, it can rename badly formatted music files automatically by looking at the song’s metadata and renaming the file accordingly. There’s also a quick tag editor and you can play duplicate files to check them before deletion. If you don’t have Winamp installed, the program complains about it, but a quick reconfigure pointing to where your favorite media player is installed will fix that. Start by choosing the folders or hard drives that should and should not be included in the scan, the file types that it should and shouldn’t look for, and the maximum and minimum file size to further cut down on the results. Click through the wizard to see the results and find the options for deleting the duplicate music. For instance, you can automatically keep the newest or oldest version or manually delete the one you don’t want. You can even save the duplicate list to a DUP file so that you can open it again in the future without having to re-scan.
