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mc-ornell Author

Level 1

16 points

Apple Music dumbing down my Vinyl Studio recordings

I'm using Vinyl Studio to digitize my records at CD Quality 16/44.1 in the ALAC (Apple Lossless) format, and yet after saving into my iTunes/Apple Music library, they show up as 128 kbps AAC files? As Apple still is not offering High Res or at least CD quality music, I would at least like to preserve my vinyl (and CD) collection at CD quality (or above) on my Mac and listen to it that way too. I don't believe I ever used or turned on iTunes Match whereby Apple would convert your music (if it was available) to Apple Music 256 kbps files ( and even if it was enabled, wouldn't the tracks be 256kbps, not 128?) Whether I've ripped my own music or purchased something from HD Tracks, for example, I don't want iTunes/Apple Music to

replace it with an inferior quality version. What gives? Is there some setting I'm missing? This is very frustrating.

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 8, 2021 9:31 AM

Best reply

mc-ornell Author

Level 1

16 points

Posted on Feb 9, 2021 12:35 PM

Thanks for getting back, Jim. It ended up being a Vinyl Studio issue....not iTunes. Even though I had specified to save the files in the format they were recorded (ALAC 16/44.1 CD quality), VS defaulted to AAC 128kbps for iTunes. So I deleted my files in iTunes/Apple Music and resaved them, this time specifying ALAC 16/44.1 for each file. And it was only these 3 files I recently recorded as I hadn't been using VS for quite some time. All my earlier high res downloads/CD rips etc are still fine. So all is good now. My only issue now is that the Bit Perfect program I'd been using for playback doesn't seem to work anymore...I guess it was never updated since Apple Music took over from iTunes.

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Apple Music dumbing down my Vinyl Studio recordings

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