Since I’ve been going through a lot of physical CDs to scan cover art, I figured I’d be sure to get disc IDs while I’m at it. On this particular release, I added the disc ID before realizing it already had one, but they don’t quite match. I added the release originally, and someone else added the disc ID about a year later. They’re almost identical, except track 7 differs by about 20 seconds. The longer one is my version. Is it ok for disc IDs to be this far off? Should I remove the older one, since I know I have the correct disc in hand?
In general it could well be there is a second version with the oher disc ID. But the time difference is huge enough that this really should be separated, if it exists. And given the fact that you originally added this, yours is by definition more correct, matching the original recording lengths you entered.
Another (weak) indicator might be checking freedb (http://www.freedb.org/freedb_discid_check.php) which lists a different release for the longer disc ID (I can’t really believe I used FreeDB as a source )
So I would remove the mismatched disc ID.
Except perhaps if the 20 seconds are silence. Older CDs sometimes did that to separate the two “sides” of an album, or to separate the first bonus track from the main album.
That silence does not make for a separate recording, so I also would not use a different release (as long as the other info like barcode, label, catno, … matches).