AudioCanon — The Living Archive Approaching V1.0

The AudioCanon application

Your collection,
alive with context.

A native macOS archive for understanding every release, hearing every recording, and caring for the music you have spent a lifetime collecting.

The real AudioCanon Abbey Road Super Deluxe Edition view with authentic artwork, accurate track numbering and durations, and the full Beatles archive visible behind it
45,914Tracks in Hi Res Audio
8,904Tracks in Beatles Complete
348Artists in multi-artist view
165Beatles release groups
01Designed for collectors

A music library shows files. AudioCanon reveals the collection.

Releases, discs, box sets, alternate versions, artwork, notes, provenance, and the relationships between them become part of one coherent archive—without forcing the collection into a generic streaming-library model.

Automatic presentation adapts to single-artist and multi-artist libraries, while specialist knowledge profiles can add deeper context without changing the source folders that collectors already trust.

02Archive profiles

One application. Two archive grammars.

These are live views of the actual collections—not a shortened demo. AudioCanon changes its presentation to match the archive it is reading.

AudioCanon Hi Res Audio multi-artist view listing many artists and showing 348 artists and 45,914 indexed tracks
Multi-artist archive

Hi Res Audio

Artist-first browsing keeps thousands of releases approachable, with expandable catalogues and track totals visible before opening an album.

348Artists
45,914Tracks
AudioCanon Beatles Complete single-artist view showing release sets, editions, 165 release groups, and 8,904 indexed tracks
Single-artist specialist archive

The Beatles — Complete Archive

Release families, editions, sets, versions, and Beatles-specific knowledge come forward when one artist’s history is the archive itself.

165Releases
8,904Tracks
03 · Listen

Hear the archive while you explore it.

AudioCanon is not a silent database. Native macOS playback, release queues, precise seeking, volume, level meters, and file-derived quality details make listening part of the archival workflow.

  • Persistent Now Playing across every view
  • Search-to-audition handoff without restarting a track
  • Full-release queues from any selected song
  • High-resolution format details at a glance
The real AudioCanon Kind of Blue view with authentic artwork, five indexed tracks, correct titles, and file-derived durations
The real Beatles Complete duplicate view proving that two twelve-track releases are byte-for-byte identical and showing the evidence-based keeper recommendation
04 · Understand

Duplicates proven, not guessed.

AudioCanon compares complete release folders by their audio bytes—not by filenames or similar-looking titles. Exact duplicates are separated from partial-overlap suggestions, and every keeper recommendation explains its evidence.

  • Complete SHA-256 album-level comparison
  • Manual-review suggestions kept visibly separate
  • Artwork, sidecars, and collection context inform the keeper
  • Review decisions remain reversible
05 · Recognize

Every release looks and feels like music.

Authentic cover artwork, release identity, track metadata, documents, and playback live together in one focused view—so the archive stays visually familiar while becoming much more useful.

  • Local sidecar and embedded artwork discovery
  • Release identity and track metadata in context
  • Files, documents, and playback in one window
  • Artwork choices stored without altering source audio
The real AudioCanon release window showing Pink Floyd’s The Wall, authentic artwork, 26 indexed tracks, correct track numbering, and file-derived durations

Intelligence that respects the evidence.

AudioCanon works locally first, makes uncertainty visible, and keeps the collector in control of every conclusion.

06

Release identity

Build a fuller picture from embedded tags, folder structure, track durations, release notes, CUE sheets, artwork, and optional external providers.

LOCAL NOTESMUSICBRAINZDISCOGS
07

Artwork and documents

Discover embedded covers and complete sidecar trees. Browse notes, logs, checksum manifests, and CUE sheets alongside the release they describe.

08

Living archives

Native filesystem monitoring reconciles additions, replacements, moves, renames, and removals without repeatedly rescanning an entire collection.

09

Collector structures

Navigate releases, folders, discs, volumes, box sets, nested collections, and version families without flattening the archive into a generic grid.

10

Reversible metadata

Refine titles, artists, years, track numbers, and disc numbers in an original-versus-proposed workbench with field-level provenance and durable Undo.

11

Portable curation

Export and import an integrity-checked AudioCanon catalog package containing the decisions and organization that make the collection yours.

12The AudioCanon standard

Care before change.

Source audio is treated as irreplaceable. Scanning, analysis, playback, identity work, and curation are read-only by default. The rare workflow that can affect a folder is deliberately difficult to perform casually.

01Preview

See the exact intended result before anything is permitted to advance.

02Verify

Fresh hashes, path boundaries, and preconditions prove that the source is unchanged.

03Confirm

A deliberate, expiring confirmation is bound to the verified operation.

04Journal

Intent and recovery information are recorded before the operation begins.

05Undo

Successful supported changes retain a durable route back.

AudioCanon — The Living Archive

A lifetime of listening,
brought into focus.

AudioCanon is approaching its first stable public release for macOS. Availability and download information will be published when the application is ready.

Read the development status →