Big problems downloading iTunes Match lossless music collection
I have a gigantic music collection accumulated over the last decade that is mostly music that I encoded to Apple Lossless from my CD collection or bought digitally online in lossless ALAC format. I have subscribed to iTunes Match since it came out to allow me to store my music in the cloud and restore it to my machine when I upgrade. I just updated my MacBook Pro and let it download all day to get my music back on it, and I just noticed that about 18% of the songs downloaded in HLS media format instead of ALAC.
A number of the remaining songs downloaded in a lossy format even though I toggled lossless before downloading everything. For example, from a backup I see metadata like:
afinfo /Volumes/NAS/MusicMarch24\ -\ DO\ NOT\ DELETE/Phish/2024_02_22\ Riviera\ Maya\,\ MX/1-05\ hey\ stranger.m4a
File: /Volumes/NAS/MusicMarch24 - DO NOT DELETE/Phish/2024_02_22 Riviera Maya, MX/1-05 hey stranger.m4a
File type ID: m4af
Num Tracks: 1
----
Data format: 2 ch, 44100 Hz, alac (0x00000001) from 16-bit source, 4096 frames/packet
no channel layout.
estimated duration: 408.106667 sec
audio bytes: 46876883
audio packets: 4394
bit rate: 918897 bits per second
packet size upper bound: 13024
maximum packet size: 13024
audio data file offset: 1424453
optimized
audio 17997504 valid frames + 0 priming + 320 remainder = 17997824
source bit depth: I16
----
But when I look at what Music.app downloaded, I see:
afinfo /Users/matt/Music/Music/Media.localized/Music/Phish/2024_02_22\ Riviera\ Maya,\ MX/1-05\ hey\ stranger.m4a
File: /Users/matt/Music/Music/Media.localized/Music/Phish/2024_02_22 Riviera Maya, MX/1-05 hey stranger.m4a
File type ID: m4af
Num Tracks: 1
----
Data format: 2 ch, 44100 Hz, aac (0x00000000) 0 bits/channel, 0 bytes/packet, 1024 frames/packet, 0 bytes/frame
no channel layout.
estimated duration: 408.106667 sec
audio bytes: 13433333
audio packets: 17578
bit rate: 263295 bits per second
packet size upper bound: 1211
maximum packet size: 1211
audio data file offset: 79259
optimized
audio 17997504 valid frames + 2112 priming + 256 remainder = 17999872
format list:
[ 0] format: 2 ch, 44100 Hz, aac (0x00000000) 0 bits/channel, 0 bytes/packet, 1024 frames/packet, 0 bytes/frame
Channel layout: Stereo (L R)
Loudness Info:
sound check info :
sc ave perceived power coeff : "1921 1477"
sc max perceived power coeff : "15110 13064"
sc peak amplitude msec : "86912 359862"
sc max perceived power msec : "324591 314792"
sc peak amplitude : "32664 32212"
sound check volume normalization gain: -3.00 dB
----
It's not even very predictable within an album. For example, this one came down as a mixture of HLS and AAC for no reason that I can figure out:
This created a GIGANTIC mess of my music collection that I would need to go back to backups to fix, which negates the whole point of iTunes Match for my purpose. Furthermore, this doesn't instill confidence that it won't somehow do the wrong thing again in the future.
Any tips? At this point I'm wondering if dumping iTunes Match and trying to find a third party music manager is the right approach.