Preferred Deletion Criteria

Highest Bit Depth
Highest Quality Audio Format
Album with Most Tracks
Most Songs in Same Folder
Earliest Folder Creation Date
Earliest File Creation Date
Earliest Folder Modified Date
Earliest File Modified Date
Original Filename
Highest Bitrate
Longest Track Length
Latest Folder Creation Date
Latest Folder Modified Date
Latest File Creation Date
Latest File Modified Date
Not Compilation Album

When duplicates are found, SongKong decides upon the song to be kept and the songs to be deleted based on the order of this criteria, the songs that best matches the criteria is the song that is kept. The first item in the list is used to compare songs, and only if all the songs for that key are found to have the same value for the criteria does additional criteria get used in the order they are listed. To change the order of the criteria click on the criteria you wish to reorder and use the up and down keys to move into position.

Highest Bit Depth

Calculates the Bit Depth, this is most useful for ensuring we keep HD recordings that usually have a bit depth of 24 bytes instead of CD quality which is only 16bits, this criteria is only applied to lossless audio formats.

Highest Quality Audio Format

Keeps the file format that comes earlier in the Preferred Audio Format list. By default SongKong keeps FLAC or lossless files, wherever possible. You may prefer lossy files if you want to save space on your music player. To change the order of the Preferred Audio Format select the audio format you wish to reorder and use the up and down keys to move into position.

Album with Most Tracks

This compares the Track Total field of the songs, the logic for this criteria is that if two versions of the same songs are linked to different releases then it will be preferred to keep the one linked to the larger release (e.g album instead of single, or special edition album rather than standard album)

Most Songs in Same Folder

This check show many files are within each folder, and keeps the song in the folder with the most files, this criteria helps keeps albums together when the customer may have some albums split.

Earliest Folder Creation Date

This option keeps the folder with the earliest creation date, because this indicates it is the original folder. This criteria is not availble for Linux based systems because Linux systems do not store file creation date

Earliest File Creation Date

This option keeps the file with the earliest creation date, this indicates it is the original version of the song. This criteria is not availble for Linux based systems because Linux systems do not store file creation date

Earliest Folder Modified Date

This option keeps the file with the earliest modification date

Earliest File Modified Date

This option keeps the file with the earliest modification date

Original Filename

If your preferred deletion criteria is Filename SongKong keeps the file name that looks like the original file by looking for words such as Copy in the file name and rejecting them.

Highest Bitrate

Bitrate describes the number of bits or amount of data that are processed over a certain amount of time. In audio this usually means kilobits. For example, the music you buy on iTunes is 256 kilobits per second, meaning there are 256 kilobits of data in every second of song. The higher the bitrate of a track, the more space it will take up on your computer. Generally, an audio CD will take up quite a bit of space which is why it has become common practice to compress those files.

If bitrate is your preferred deletion criteria then SongKong will keeps the song with the highest bitrate. It doesn't usually make sense to compare the bitrate of different audio formats, so this criteria should always come below the audio format criteria.

Longest Track Length

When your preferred deletion criteria is Longest Track Length SongKong keeps the longest song and assumes that the shorter version of the same song may be incorrectly clipped.

Latest Folder Creation Date

This option keeps the file with the folder latest creation date. This criteria is not availble for Linux based systems because Linux systems do not store file creation date

Latest Folder Modified Date

This option keeps the file with the latest modification date

Latest File Creation Date

This option keeps the file with the latest creation date. This criteria is not availble for Linux based systems because Linux systems do not store file creation date

Latest File Modified Date

This option keeps the file with the latest modification date

Not Compilation Album

This option keeps the file that is not part of a Compilation album.