Advice on import of large music collection

[simoncn]

(26-02-2015 00:00)DavidHB Wrote:  I was thinking of CDDB/Gracenote, which I had cause to investigate a few years ago when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make a Brennan JB7 work the way I wanted it to. This is how the Wikipedia article on CDDB describes how it works:

"CDDB was designed around the task of identifying entire CDs, not merely single tracks. The identification process involves creating a "discid", a sort of "fingerprint" of a CD created by performing calculations on the track duration information stored in the table-of-contents of the CD ... This discid is used with the Internet database, typically either to download track names for the whole CD or to submit track names for a newly identified CD."

MusicBrainz/Picard uses an acoustic fingerprint (Wikipedia article here) to identify CDs (and possibly individual tracks).

In the latter case, the data elements used do not appear to include track lengths at all. CDDB does use track lengths, but calculates a digital signature from them. This can certainly produce multiple matches, as any user of the Brennan device can testify.

David

This is not a digital signature in the normally accepted usage of this term. It seems more like a hash of the track length information.

The information about MusicBrainz and acoustic fingerprinting is interesting. Something like this would be needed to identify individual tracks rather than complete albums, as the track length would clearly be insufficient.