hi,

i'm in need of a software that can compare music files, but not in the common sense of doing a bit-by-bit compare. i know that comparing two files bit by bit is trivial. comparing two wave files that are offset relative to each other but identical otherwise is also possible.

but what i need is a software that could tell me that, e.g. a flac version and an mp3 version of a song are "sufficiently similar" as to rule out having two different versions of that song (let's say an extended and a radio version). i guess transcoding the flac to mp3 and comparing the two mp3 files bit by bit is not possible when you don't know the settings the first mp3 was encoded with.

if that software could report clicks and pops in one version as a gross difference, that would be even better. edit: it also should be ignorant to 1) different volume levels 2) possibly reversed stereo. is that even possible?

the main goal is to do things at least faster than realtime, i.e. without listening to both versions at the same time which demands concentration and is not really feasible for any larger number of songs.

is there anything like that?

thanks

Audio fingerprint is what you are looking for. It create a signature related to the audio content of a file.

i'm not sure whether you are referring to a program or a technique. either way, i have found http://musicbrainz.org/ which seems to be exactly what i need. i'm gonna play around with it.