If your looking at 'all tracks' and you see more than one instance of the same track is this a duplicate or just a reference to another playlist?
It would be nice if Emplode shows all of a particular songs references.

'All tracks' shows tune files, not playlist entries. You can see in how many playlists the tune appears by adding 'Refs' column to the listing. There is no easy way to see where are tunes (or playlists) referenced - no 'crossreference' views yet. When I need that info I use CVS list.

So if the same song is in 'all tracks' twice w/no apparent difference between the two songs it's a duplicate?
I'm not saying 'ref' twice but appears in the list twice.
I have one song it appears two times in 'all tracks' one says it's 'ref 0' the other 'ref 2' is the one that's referenced '0' a duplicate?

Yes, it would be a duplicate. To be completely sure, add 'FID' column as well. In empeg scheme of things FID is, in database parlance, primary key for both tunes and playlists, i.e. the datum that uniquely identifies them (it is also the filename). You should see that your two otherwise identical tunes have different FIDs.

I've looked at 'FID' but w/o a duplicate 'FID' number can't tell if the song referenced more than once is a duplicate or a different encode method or something, for I tend to forget to label them as different. I would hate to waste space on my empeg.

Err, I am not sure I understand. Adding 'refs' and 'FID' column everywhere will make it possible to see both how many times a particular tune file is referenced, and to positivaly identify it. So, if in 'All Tracks' view you see two instances of a particular song, you can be certain that they are indeed different files on empeg (with names same as FIDs). Of course, it will not tell you why are there two copies and are they indeed same, or, as you say, differ in encoding or something. A look at details popup could shed some light, but not necessarily. So, if you see that one of them is referenced twice, and the other not once, it might either mean that you may remove the unreferenced one, or that you actually intended to reference each one once (for some reason). You may have to listen to them (start them from emplode) in order to determine whether one should go

BTW, I am in the middle of pruning duplicates from my empeg: it's amazing how many of them I managed to upload. CVS listing and hex calculator are invaluable in this endeavour.

Adding 'refs' and 'FID' column everywhere will make it possible to see both how many times a particular tune file is referenced, and to positivaly identify it.

Wow that would really take a lot of time to do considering the amount of files (2045) x amount of crosslinked references (2-5) for each song. Truly an impossible task, not to mention the time it has already taken me to change my bad tags that v2.0b3 has made me aware of. I hadn't realize how many bad or missing tags I had in v1.03.

If you have the same song on the player twice, but with two different FIDs, it's a duplicate and you can delete one of them. Somehow, you accidentally uploaded the song to the player twice.

The only trouble will be finding which playlists the songs live in so that you don't lose one or the other without realizing it.

And by the way, just because a song has the same title doesn't mean it's a duplicate. I've got five totally different songs on my player titled "Mother". You think some of these artists have got, um... issues?

OK, I think it's finally sinking in, if there is more than one instance of a song in 'all tracks' then it's a duplicate. I was mistaking that the duplicate instances might have been the other copies in other playlists & I was deleting them. I should have noticed that there wasn't enough of the dupes to be that, even though there were quite a few dupe, I gotta watch that. Thanks.

What I meant was this (that's how I approach duplicate elimination on my empeg that currently holds some 4000 tunes):

- I added 'Refs' and 'FID' column to all views (at least playlist, search and all tracks)
- Select 'All tracks', order by title, look for duplicates or near-duplicates
- Take a look at details to see whether they are duplicates, or, to borrow Tony's example, songs called 'Mother' from several different bands
- When in doubt, listen to them one by one
- If they are duplicates, and one (or more) is not referenced anywhere, delete it; this is the rare case: usually one is referenced in some lists, the other in some more lists
- Look up in CVS list tunes by name and find in which playlists they appear
- Go to those playlists and use FIDs displayed to determine which tune is which (this can be done directly by FID from CVS, but involves hex-to-decimal conversion and back [1])
- Decide which to keep (if they are not identical listening helps), insert it into relevant playlists in stead of the one to be deleted, delete the other

[1] Why didn't I modify spreadsheet containing CVS to display FIDS in hexadecimal? Aha: it wasn't simple to do with list of playlist entries, and I was too lazy to write conversion script, not knowing I have so many duplicates...