There are a lot of posts on this Music Bringer, but the first thing you need to do is define what
you mean by duplicates.
Eg. to get exact duplicates (but regardless of file type like mp3 or FLAC) you need to filter the smartlist by Artist, Album, Name
and Duration. This I find is only useful if you have ripped the same cd twice or have consolidated backup drives. Often there is up to a 3 second difference in song length between album versions, bit rates or file types -- like a compilation album with the same track might be a second longer or shorter than the cut on the original album depending on leading an trailing silences etc etc.
So your basic filter would be on Album, Artist, Name of you want to keep all potential versions and do not consider them duplicates. Otherwise it could be just Name, Artist ... If you want to really clean up as it sound like you would only be using Artist, Name as your criterion. You can then set up your columns and sorting order to regroup the tracks in a detail view as you as you want for easiest selection/deletion. I prefer to use a View rather than a smartlist, as you can set up a Pane View to have the basic criteria you want to remove. Eg one of the panes could be file type. The results of the filter could then be drilled down to only show the mp3 dupes. Select them all and the flac files will remain for example. Same for bit-depth etc.
Note that although this might be sufficient for Pop music, euh ... most of the time, for Jazz or Classical this simple filter could give you tons of duplicates - same thing with live vs; studio versions of the same song. So define what you are trying to weed out first. Then choose the criteria for your results accordingly.
How can I instruct a smartlist to display these rules.
Umm, please talk slowly. I do not understand code.
thanks,
You don't have to know code, use the wizard and choose "only duplicates of" in the Modify Results box of the smartlist or view wizard window ... then choose the fields you want to filter in the drip down box to the right. (see screen shot attached)
BTW - when people post code to help on the forum, you can simply copy it and by hitting the import/export button in the wizard window, paste the code someone gives you in the box that appears