How do you check if two collections of MP3 files are identical when their normal checksums differ because different programs have done different things to their headers?
I had this problem recently when I was trying to save a bit of diskspace and I found myself wondering if two groups of MP3 files were in fact identical. The solution seems to be to use the avconv command, like this:
avconv -i temp.mp3 -f crc - 2>/dev/null | grep CRC
This yields a CRC value for just the music portion of the file temp.mp3, ignoring the ID3 and other forms of data which are added to the file. If the CRCs are the same for two files, the two files are the same, from a sound point of view at least.