Matching digitized vinyl iTunes imports

In iTunes, select "View Options"

From the "View" menu, and check "iCloud Status". You'll find each item in your library listed as Waiting, Uploaded, Matched, or Ineligible.

Uploaded items are songs that weren't Matched, but are

Uploaded to "iTunes in the Cloud" and are available to

Download on any device connected to that iCloud account.

Ineligible items are iTunes Extras, Voice memos, etc.

Hope this helps. More info is available in Apple support article TS4124

http://www.apple.com/kb/TS4124

Posted from my iPhone 4S

This is just a wild guess but my theory is all CDs have a digital "fingerprint". Thats how you can get track names from Gracenote when you import a CD into iTunes. Digitizing a vinyl record won't be an exact match, even though the ID tags match the copies Apple has. I'm guessing they are erring on the side that what you have is different from what they have. What would be cool (although I don't see it happening) is the ability to force iTunes to match those kind of tracks.

It may take some time to ferret out just how iTunes match works (or in some cases, doesn't) but I can assure you that at least in some instances, it DOES match vinyl rips. I know, because I've ripped quite a few myself and while not all songs end up matching, many of them do. Some records won't make it at all, but if they do, generally, 40%-60% of the tracks make it. There are a select few albums that have made it through 100% (Nautilus Superdisks), something that's not true even for some CDs. I'm in the process of comparing my vinyl rips to what is on the iTunes store in order to identify any discrepancies in track name, length, order (often vinyl track orders are different) that might in their totality keep a match from being made, but so far what I have are just a few clues to the mystery.

Given that I haven't yet heard of anyone else having success with the matching process when it comes to vinyl, finding out what it is that I do "right" is, I know, kind of major for anyone else wanting to repeat my success. It's important to me too, and I promise I'll keep working on it. You may have part of the answer: wow and flutter, clicks and pops, silence duration between tracks, tracks in different order, all could be factors. My guess is that there are many things that come into play, that Apple and Gracenote are using weighted criteria to determine what matches, what doesn't. If so, the key is to figure out which factors are the most important and to focus on those.

I won't put every detail of my recording process here, but assuming there's something in how I do it that affects the matching proceess, I will give you the basics. I use a Dual 1219, feeding a Yamaha CX-600U preamp, set in Direct mode. The Yamaha's output is fed directly into a MacBook Pro, so I'm at the mercy of its sound card. The Dual 1219 is a good table, but even using a strobe, I'm not about to say it's so speed accurate that I'm not losing or gaining appreciable time in my rips, compared to Apple's database. Even so, I've got songs matched that were off by a few seconds, so clearly that's not a deal-breaker. Conversely, I've seen songs with identical durations not match, so go figure.

I record using Audacity and only use two filters for posting in it. (1) DC offset remover because of the sound card (2) amplify to get the level of the entire album maxed (if I weren't lazy, I'd max each side separately, which I suspect is how the master cutter did it). I record both sides of an album at once and shoot for a -6 Db so I don't clip. Depending on the condition of the record, I may elect to put fade in/outs, but generally only on the first and last tracks of each side. I've recently started using ClickRepair which gets done after the above in Audacity, but I use it sparingly, sometimes not at all if the record's in good enough shape. I import back into Audacity to name my tracks and to output them. I leave the silence duration after each song intact (I don't replace it with true silence), though I do kill dead air at the beginning and end of each side.

(NOTE: I'm looking into whether first and last songs are less likely to get matched, I don't have that answer now).

Finally, while I record and process at 96000 Hz, 32-bit float, I output individual tracks at 44100 Hz in AAC format. These are the files that get imported into iTunes. Those files have some metadata in them, such as album and track names, genre. For some reason, artist name added in Audacity gets wiped before it hits iTunes, so I end up re-entering that, plus adding total number of tracks, something Audacity doesn't have a field for.

Below are the highlights of what I've discovered about the matching process in general and vinyl in specific:

(1) If you think that having a really good recording from pristine vinyl is going to improve the match, maybe so, but consider this. I have a beat up copy of Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin and some of those tracks matched. That recording was cleaned up using the click removal in Audacity, so it's still pretty noisy and probably more dull than it should be. My copy of Janis Joplin's Pearl is in better shape than Lady in Satin, but it's seen better days too. That one got cleaned up in ClickRepair. Several of those tracks matched too. Some tracks, like Mercedes Benz did not, but given the amount of silence, the noise on that one could have kicked it out, since if I think the music is going to suffer, I kick back the cleanup.

(2) The matching process likely puts weight on a scan of portions of the file that actually consist of music, which only makes sense, really. I point this out only to caution that just fixing track names, metadata etc. probably isn't going to do it. Songs in my library (from CD) with corrupted metadata, actually made it through. According to iTunes, this handful of songs had no metadata other than track number and total tracks on the disk. After the matching process, iTunes still showed them as being "track 04," but using iTunes to query Gracenote resulted in them quickly being matched and metadata restored. I suppose it's possible Gracenote was able to read metadata that was corrupted but that seems a bit of a strech to me.

(3) Getting something to "match" and getting it past "ineligible" are two different animals entirely. While it won't be the answer for everyone, all I had to do to get every "ineligible" track into the system was to make an AAC copy within iTunes. I would sort to show me ineligible tracks, batch process them, immediately delete the originals and have iTunes rescan for matches. They all made it through second time, though as usual, some matched, some uploaded.

(4) Deleting songs from your library and from the cloud (you get that option when you opt to delete a track) does NOT immediately delete it from the cloud. Trashing your local copies doesn't do it either. The tracks will be deleted from the directory you see in iTunes on the computer where you're working, but trust me, they stay resident on Apple's servers for some time. I know this because (1) enabling iCloud on an iPad after deleting albums from the MacBook Pro showed them still being there; (2) re-uploading those "deleted" tracks resulted in their status moving from "waiting" to "uploaded" in a heartbeat and never even showing in the status bar as being uploaded. I waited over 24 hours, tried it again, and same result. This is a real pain, as it makes experimenting with changes pretty much impossible.

Sorry that I don't have a magic bullet that will get your vinyl rips through. After all, my own success has been mixed. I'd say take heart, because it can be done, but until we determine just what are the most important factors to getting tracks to match, there's no way to know what you'll have to do to get your stuff to pass muster with Apple. Meanwhile, enjoy the music.

Message was edited by: JiminMissouri, fixed typo

I too have been disappointed by iTunes Match not matching alot of my digitized vinyl albums. The one in particular is Led Zeppelin (the first album) which clearly is available from the iTunes store. Yet none of the songs were matched. I was really hoping that the $25 subscription would have provided me with clean versions of my vinyl recordings.

Am in the same boat. Virtually none of my vinyl rips have matched, and in fact a lot of my CD rips haven't either. Compared to e.g. Shazam the algorithm seems very finickety. I expect this is to avoid false positives that would be acceptable to Shazam... Match has to be absolutely 100% to match a track, Shazam can just be 90%. What I suspect is that the algorithm is matching our songs, just not to the right confidence threshold...

I also wouldn't be surprised if a condition of record company permission to launch match wasn't to make that confidence threshold very high. It's not in their interest to launder terrible quality Napster era 128k rips into pristine 256k AACs. And unfortunately those of us with vinyl fall into that same boat.

What I'd like to see in future is something more like the way TuneUp handles artwork - i.e. the software gives you a list of possible songs and you choose the one that's right. I would be amazed if the record companies ever allow this though as essentially it would let you choose other songs you don't own and get them for free.

I do think that the matching algorithm will get some fine-tuning in future, though, so hopefully we'll see accuracy improve.

I have a lot of needledrops and actually prefer them over the CD / iTunes versions - so I'm actually on the other end of this discussion believe it or not. I am usually on the Steve Hoffman forums where other persons like myself frequent, btw (we are all vinyl nuts). Ideally I woudn't want any of my vinyl needledrops to Match.

I've checked out the Steve Hoffman forums, but not for quite awhile. I have a Discogs account and the forums over there have been of some help. Most of what I've learned has been tied directly to the Audacity help resources.

http://www.discogs.com/user/jamesneal241

I then run a tool called "ClickRepair" ($40 but definitely worth the money for my needledrops) to reduce the pops and clicks - it works much better than what Audacity gives you. I then take that cleaned up WAV file and import back into Audacity to break up the tracks and Amplify them, usually to -.5db. I usually keep the silence at the end of the track btw, I don't fade in/out and I don't cut it out.

Aha! The previsoulsy discussed issue of clipping. I've left Amplify at the default. -.5db could be a significant factor, given as you pointed out in another posting, there is a lot of stuff out there that's clipped and people just don't know it. I'll be sure to make that change to my process.

I recently began using ClickRepair and agree with your assessment - certainly worth the $40, much better than the Audacity solution, which I stopped using very quickly. Until I got ClickRepair I was manually removing the worst damage and just leaving the rest. Interestingly, I put a manually cleaned copy of Pearl to iTunes Match, later a version run through ClickRepair. The results were the same (see above). Honestly, my experience is that iTunes Match is a lot more forgiving, at least in some cases, of what I'd call marginal source material.

The way you handle silence is pretty much how I do it. When I've done manual cleanup, I have found myself putting a great deal of time into fade in/outs and silence between tracks, simply because that's where damage is more likely to be an issue for my ear.

- Your gear. I know that, in my case, the line-in I'm using on my laptop introduces noise to my setup (I can see it in tools like Spek, when recording silence and then checking the results). I also had a grounding issue for awhile that I eventually corrected, but some of my older needledrops probably still have a very faint buzzing sound which would likely cause problems with my source recording.

I did have a grounding issue when I first got set up, but worked it out before I started recording. One problem I had was a buzzing from a light on the same circuit. It was coming from a dimmer switch - something I'd learned long ago to avoid when recording, but also forgot long ago. I do have a question as to whether Audacity's Bias Offset Removal, while clearly straightening things out on the waveform for me, is helping or hindering when it comes to matching.

- Track length. I've seen this crop up with CD rips and I bet it's a factor here as well. I don't keep track of whether my vinyl track is the same length as a CD copy, but it's likely to be a few seconds off in many cases. And remember that I keep the silence at the end of the track whenever possible.

I'm unsure how much weight this is being given, particularly when there are so many reports of people getting things "matched" only to find what they got was a shorter version than what they actually have. Also, my own experience has been that songs + - several seconds are often matching.

I do wonder though, if nailing the opening of a track, getting it as close to what Apple's version is, would make a difference. It would be interesting to take a song that matched, move the start point so there's a full second before the song actually starts, and see if it would still get through.

My guess is silence at the end of a track can't be very relevant to what matches. Nothing is more likely to be different between a CD and vinyl than silence duration and waveform. The day I see a clean, flat, uninterrupted line on a waveform of the "silent" section of one of my vinyl rips, well that's not a day I expect to ever see!

Here's the ujltimate issue - Apple isn't targeting people like you or I. Their target audience are people who have either CD rips, iTunes purchased tracks, eMusic / Amazon tracks or "other". Needledrops or cassette dubs probably aren't a factor in the equation. To be honest, I was suprised that I had any tracks matched at all - I was expecting a very low % of tracks given all the potential pitfalls with a needledrop. Abbey Road, in particular, was over 50% matched which was a complete shock to me.

Agreed that we don't fit the domographic, but for those of us who have more vinyl than CD source material (I think I'm past 4,000 albums now) and are interested in being able to use iTunes Match, the fact that it is possible to do so is tantalizing. My guess is that the need to implement a matching process that would allow for some pretty crappy MP3 files to get through is the very reason we're having any luck at all getting vinyl (and in your case cassette as well) to match. Before I tried it myself, all I'd read led me to believe it wouldn't work at all, so I've been as surprised as you at my results.

Thanks for all the info. on your own process. I'll dig through it and see what I might do to alter my own.

Message was edited by: JiminMissouri - Added note on -.5 Db on Amplify

I picked PJ Harvey specifically because it's a new release, but also because I've heard the CD version and the sound differences between the two are hard to distinguish assuming the few pop/clicks are removed. And this is of interest because the match % on that one was very high for me. I still think masterings are a critical component to the matching process.

My best match, all tracks but one, is Jaco Pastorius' self-titled. Only Opus Pocus, track one on side two, didn't make it through. I've noticed it seems as though songs that make it through are in groups, then one doesn't make it, then groups again. I'm wondering if in some cases being the first or last track on a side is significant. Outer and inner tracks are more susceptible to certain kinds of wear and damage.

Also, another factor to keep in mind as far as your TT - pitch control..

True. My Dual is an idler wheel. I use a strobe disc to dial it in, but admittedly I haven't been as religious about checking it as I should. I do think getting pitch as close to what Apple's using as a baseline is probably a significant factor in getting a match. I've read of people who knew the vinyl they had was mastered at the wrong speed, something that was corrected when it went to CD. In those cases, a match might require being able to adjust your playback pitch to approximate the CD correction - something I can't imagine having the patience for.

Here are the results of some of my vinyl matches.

Art Tatum - The Essential Art Tatum 7, 9 (this disc is in bad shape so I was surprised even two made it)

Billy Holiday - Lady In Satin 11, 12 (also in bad shape, so bad I haven't recorded the A side, so two out of six I submitted made it)

Bob James - Bob James Two 2, 4, 6 (50% match)

Buckingham/Nicks Nothing matched, but I'm not sure it's in the iTunes store

Chick Corea - Eye Of The Beholder 1, 3, 4, 5, 9 (there are variations in track order between vinyl and CD, songs on CD not on vinyl (or vice-versa, forget which)

Classics IV - Spooky 11 - so it matched the title track, which is probably somewhere on the store, but I don't think the actual album's available.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - no matches. Fine, with my luck I'd get the short version of SuzyQ which really isn't SuzyQ at all.

Dave Brubeck - Greatest Hits 5, 10 Again, most likely songs available on other albums and in the store.

Dave Brubeck - Time Out 1, 3, 4, 7 I've got three copies on vinyl of this one, so it's probably a good one to experiment with.

David Crosby - Wind On The Water 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Didn't realize this matched all but one until I looked. My copy is M-, but that in and of itself hasn't been enough to get other albums to match so well.

DIane Schuur - And the Count Basie Orchestra 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9. This is a digitally mastered album I got still sealed. My guess is others she did around that time would match too - if they were in the iTunes store that is.

Donovan - The Hurdy Gurdy Man 1, 5

Earl Klugh - Heartstring 100% match

Issac Hayes - . . . To Be Continued 0% match. Tuneup has subsequently pointed out that the title on my copy was wrong (missing three periods). It's one on the list to fix and resubmit.

Madonna - True Blue 100% match

Miles Davis - Amandla 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 Recorded from a pretty clean white label promo

Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 2, 5

Peter Gabriel - Security 3, 8

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer (maxi-single) 3, 4

Ray Lynch - Deep Breakfast 0% match

Rush - Hold Your Fire 100% match. One of the few albums I captured at 44100. Most are done at 96, but downsampled to 44100 when exported from Audacity.

Spencer Brewer - Emerald 7

Steely Dan - Aja 3, 6

Van Morrison - Moondance - matched all but last track on Side B

Van Morrisson - A Sense Of Wonder - Matched only track 1 Both Morrison albums were recorded in the same way and the one that matched was in worse shape than the one that didn't.

Vangelis - Direct 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9

Newport Jazz Festival All- Stars 0% match - may not be in the iTunes store.

William Ackerman - Conferring With The Moon 5, 8

I also have converted from vinyl a multi-disk compilation "solid gold party rock" Not in the store, but a good example of how iTunes may or may not match something if it's found on another album. I'd say I got a 40%-%50 match on that one

I haven't used Audacity's offset (that's in the normalization tool, as I recall)

No, I was referring to the filter DC Offset removal. Supposedly, some sub-par sound cards (and I'm putting the one in my Macbook into that category) somehow record stereo tracks out of phase of each other. You can see this in Audacity if you take a look at an area of silence. For me on one track I can see the waveform positive, negative at the same point on the other. When I run DC Offset, this gets fixed and what I get is a much flatter line where you'd expect it to be nearly flat. I've watched it run during actual music passages and it's clear it's making significant changes to the wafeform. I'm just not entirely convinced that what it's doing is improving things. I like the resulting sound, but there's always room for improvement.

4,000 LPs? Yikes! Not even close - I think I have ~500 right now. Not sure if I'd have the room for 4,000.

Sounds like the library a local friend I trade with has and he has the same space concern you do. 4,000 Lps - didn't count the 45's or the shellacs, which I don't have any way of playing. Contrast that with maybe a couple of hundred CDs and you can see why getting iTunes Match to work with my vinyl holds some interest for me. I don't have room for 4,000 other. Three level house - 2 walls in the basement are album storage, first and second floor have them in cabinets on shelves, and have to admit, leaned against the fireplace mantel - something I guess I'd better fix before we start using it this winter! It's an obsession, but at least it's a legal one!

then save as a 24-bit WAV file.

Could you give me some detail on how you're getting 24-bit WAV file out of Audacity? I see a custom option that might get me there, but I'd like to try and duplicate what you're using. I'm in the process of recording an album, one side at 96, the other at 44 to see if that makes any difference.

Just to add into the technical discussion. I use a tube phono preamp which to my ears makes records sound warmer than a pure digital signal path. Assuming this effect is real (and not just audiophile psychoacoustics!) you would expect a slightly different resulting waveform when everything goes through the ADC into the computer. Which again will lower match's confidence threshold.

As I said above, I refuse to believe match isn't matching our songs when Shazam does it no problem every time. It's just not matching them to the arbitrarily high confidence threshold Apple have set.

Best hope for matching reliably off vinyl is more likely to be a loosened algorithm rather than working out the precise combination of track length, click repair and offset removal... And that's up to Apple.

Apple is probably required by the RIAA to keep the threshold high enough to filter out these people.

Exactly. If you're going to give people the opportunity to download thousands of tracks, some of higher quality than they own and you're going to do it for less than my wife and I pay for a dinner out, you can be sure the RIAA's going to force you to set the bar pretty high.

I do agree Apple has likely set it higher than necessary initially and I'm hoping that was intentionally erring on the side of caution. You can work to bring things to a point where more things match, but if you went the other way, let a lot of stuff match that shouldn't then tried to take it all back . . .

Of 1505 original vinyl songs iTunes matched 668 of them (44%). Not too bad but could be better. Alot of the songs that were not matched can be found in the iTunes which makes it even more frustrating. I would be satisfied with something in the area of 80% matched.

Based on our discussions, I did some recording yesterday, processed and put to iTunes Match this morning. Still a mixed bag, though several of the albums iTunes doesn't sell so didn't expect any matches there. Interestingly two albums by the same artist matched every track, save one. No match for the very last track. Interesting. The only thing different about the last track is, well, it's the last track! I do tend to add a fadeout on it though, which alters the end and duration a bit. I'll have to toy with that some

This is a list of the factors related to recording and encoding files I think may make a difference in getting iTunes Match to, well, match recordings made from analog source material, specifically vinyl, though some people have thrown cassette recordings at the matching process and had some success. It's hardly comprehensive and certainly not all my own. Roebeet in particular has provided quite a bit of detail on his process and success in getting things to match. I just wanted to summarize my thinking.

First off, nothing I write here is meant to criticise anyone's way of doing things and it's certainly subject to change. My success is far from 100%, though it's improving. My analog equipment isn't anything to write home about either, though as I can, I improve it too.

Comments and observations from Roebeet have certainly expanded my mind on the subject in the last few days, and the changes I've made in my process thanks to his input does seem to have increased my matches. It's also sped up the process of getting vinyl into iTunes, match or no, and I'm thankful for that.

As has been said by many, changes Apple may make in the future might result in our getting better matches. However, it is also possible that when it comes to files from analog source material that changes on Apple's end might result in fewer matches. I can't do much about what Apple does (those who regularly talk to people above L1, thanks though), so I choose to work on my process to see if I can improve my success rate. I do it in part because, hey, it's kind of a fun challenge for me.

First, try to put aside any successes you've had getting other matching services to match your songs. Apple's matching to what is in iTunes, which means at best it is using a subset of the larger Gracenote database other matching services use. Further, when it comes to matching vinyl, what appears to be the "same song" for sale on iTunes, in reality is at best similar (more on that later). Finally, we don't know what Apple's agreement with the RIAA is, but chances are the deal that lets us download better copies of thousands of songs for chump change forced them to set the bar pretty high. I'm of the mind that they were right to set the bar high, then work to improve matching, as to do it the other way would likely set off a firestorm.

OK so here goes . . .

• Be certain your turntable is operating at the right speed and that wow and flutter aren't coming into play in a major way. You may assume that your TT is fine, but if you have never put a strobe disk on it, just taking it for granted because of a speed lock light or something is a little presumptuous I think. You can download a strobe from VinylEngine among other places. The thinking here is that deviations in speed that you may not hear can compress or expand the waveform enough to preclude a match. I now check before each recording session and the slight drift I need to correct for (I'm using a Dual 1219, which is an idler wheel with a speed control knob) is slight, but it is there.

• Work in lossless formats throughout. Using a lossy format for the final output file, the one you put into your library and submit to iTunes Match is fine and may for you be preferable. I use lossy at the end because I don't want to choke up my library (in particular those uploaded to the cloud and back down to iPhone). The thinking here is that you lose some data any time you convert/export using a lossy format. Some people move in and out of programs in order to do noise removal, so if done in lossy, each import/export could result in additional data loss. You may not hear it, but iTunes Match may need that extra data to do its thing.

However, when it comes to your final output, beware that not all AAC files are the same. My own experience is that some AAC files created with encoders outside of iTunes will get through Apple's initial screening process, may even result in matches, but if they are uploaded, they will not play. The encoders I've had trouble with have been tied to Audacity. I now use 16-bit WAV until the end which has the added benefit of speeding up my work. The number crunching done to create an AAC is a real time waster. You may have a lot more horsepower than I, but individual tracks exported from Audacity in 16-bit WAV get done in seconds, where AAC files take me 2-4 minutes. It's one place where speeding things up actually produces better results.

• Beware of the potential for clipping to be introduced at points where you may never see it. As Roebeet has pointed out, people using programs like Audacity have learned to keep initial recording levels low (-6 db is often mentioned), then they use the Amplify function to take things up to 0 db. Problem with this is that you've left yourself no headroom. The file may be clipped when converted during an export. Robeet's looked at a lot of maxed out files in Audacity and has seen plenty of evidence that this happens. His solution is to set Amplify at a -0.5 db, something I've already added to my process.

• Set your label tags as close to the beginning of each track as you can. I used to be a bit sloppy, just made sure I didn't clip the track. I don't know if there's an industry standard for this, nor whether such a standard is applied to everything in the iTunes store, but it stands to reason if the matching process involves locating the true beginning of the song and from there matching it to Apple's baseline copy, best not to give it anything but true music to look at. While Audacity has a "find silence" feature that can put blank tags before a lot of tracks, it's caused me enough grief that I set all my tags manually. I can do it faster anyway.

• Give some thought to how you're doing your analog to digital conversion. If you have a high-end sound card or breakout box, you may be fine. If you feed a preamp out directly into a Macbook and use the laptop's sound card, you may have a problem (that's me, by the way).

The biggest issue I'm aware of is a DC bias offset introduced by the sound card. Audacity has a filter to correct this. Before running it, areas of silence that are positive on one track are negative on the other. After running it, the areas of silence look a lot more like silence. It affects the waveform significantly. I should say I've never put anything to the match process without running DC Offset so I don't really have any evidence to support that it matters.

• Some cleanup is going to help, some is going to hurt. Of course, proper cleanup that actually involves cleaning the record before playing it is always a good idea! If you've bee working with vinyl for some time, this is a no-brainer. If you are new however, do yourself a favor and read up on proper cleaning techniques, as some not so proper methods may damage the record or leave a residue you don't need the hearing of a hunting dog to pick up on.

When it comes to digital cleanup, err on the side of caution, but know if done right, it may get you a match. It seems most people who start out in Audacity use its Click Removal filter, but after awhile their ears tell them a lot more than just clicks and pops are being removed and move on to some other program. I use ClickRepair and run it in a semi-auto mode that does a good job of helping me keep from removing transients. I'd put removing transients into the same category as clipping the signal - you're making significant deviations from the original that may easily kill a match.

I have some experience that suggest noise can kill a match, particularly on songs with quiet passages. For example,Track 1 on Zeppelin's In Through The Out Door, which starts with a long, long, long fade up, did not match for me initially. Listening to it, I was surprised at how much noisy my copy was. Still,it did match after I went back and reprocessed using ClickRepair.

• Resist the temptation to replace the silence between tracks with true silence. Mess with the dead air and you risk altering the beginning and end of the music. Some of my own experiences suggest fadeouts may hinder matching. For instance, I've got two albums by the same artist, recorded the same day using the same workflow. Every song on both albums, save one, matched. The last song on the B side, which is the only one I normally use a fade out on. If you just can't stand all the noise between your tracks, consider that a sign that the tracks are probably full of enough noise to preclude a match anyway and take steps to correct the problem.

• Do all you can to assure your metadata is as complete and correct as you possibly can make it. While it's clear that the matching process does not preclude even unnamed tracks from getting matched (I'm one of many who have had several unnamed tracks make it through), the first step in the matching process involves gathering information from your library. While I've seen nothing that confirms what Apple is doing with the information it gathers, my assumption is that at a minimum, an attempt is made to first identify possible matches based on song/artist/album title, then to actually compare the songs to see if they match. If this is true, then at the very least, the more accurate information Apple's got to work from, the faster the process will be.

If you haven't run a program like TuneUp, you might want to do so. I haven't been nearly as diligent as many are about keeping my tags clean, so the process of getting things through iTunes Match has been going on at the same time I've been cleaning up my library - not good.

• Be prepared for iTunes to throw you a lot of crazy matches. Some curve balls have been well documented: Explicit versions being matched with clean ones, album-length songs being matched with top 40 shorty versions, monos matched with stereos, etc. This is happening regardless of the media the source material came from. I think we can all agree this is a pretty big negative that Apple needs to correct.

On the plus side though, if you want access to a better copy of a song than what you have, if Apple has that song on a compliation, or anywhere else for that matter, it may match it. In doing so, it may show up as being on an album other than the one you've recorded though. A prime example for me is a recording I made from a Verve compliation of Count Basie songs from 1955-56. iTunes doesn't have it. In fact, Tuneup didn't see it either, but it found a number of the tracks on another Basie compliation (Though some might be renditions done on a different date - I haven't checked yet). I decided to go with Tuneup's tags. All of those tracks ended up being matched.

• Finally, don't expect miracles.

If you are working from vinyl, nothing that Apple has on its servers is the same as what you recorded. The music industry didn't make all those Beatle's digital files by dropping a needle on a record and even if it had, the chances are the equipment they used would be light years ahead of what most of us are using (though for some recordings, a good argument can be made that they still didn't do a very good job).

Be thankful that Apple's matching system needs to be loose enough to match files that aren't identical to the baseline file. After all, while vinyl is unique, the same can be said for all those low bitrate songs people are looking to upgrade, it's the need to accommodate sub-par all-digital rips that's allowing any vinyl to get through at all. I've certainly not seen any language from Apple suggesting the service is supposed to let you get high birate copies of songs you recorded from vinyl, cassette, 8-track . . .

Personally, while I do want more matches, I'm pretty happy with my results so far. That I can access my entire music library on any of my devices is a big deal for me. Best of all, I no longer have to hit myself in the head when my music suddenly stops because I forgot and closed the laptop!