iTunes Match is TERRIBLE

Question

Level 1

8 points

iTunes Match is TERRIBLE

I have thousands of songs in .m4a container format and using AACv2 audio codec at 64kbps, which sounds awesome and is the highest quality possible for AACv2. (both formats supported by iTunes).

For some reason Apple chose to refuse iTunes Match's support for songs with bitrate lower than 96kbps. (check http://support.apple.com/kb/ts4124)

Why this stupid decision? It has been some time since I discovered the "just works" slogan by Jobs isn't worth **** anymore, just like Google's "don't do evil".

I just paid USD25 for this service and I'm feeling extremely frustrated.

Don't tell me to "just rightclick and convert to AAC" because when you reconvert a file you lose quality, create duplicates, etc, etc.

Posted on Dec 2, 2012 4:10 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 2, 2012 7:14 PM in response to seyss

The reason for the 96 Kbps floor to matching is because below that and there isn't enough of the waveform of the song left for the matching process to work with.

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Answer 2

seyss Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2012 4:08 PM in response to Michael Allbritton

Is this Apple or Samsung? Why can't iTunes convert the low bitrate stream to 96kbps on the fly before running the matching process?

FAIL

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Answer 3

Dec 3, 2012 7:56 PM in response to seyss

That would not work. In a 64 Kbps audio file there simply isn't enough information left to work with and cross converting to over 96 Kbps would throw away even more of the song data and make the loss worse.

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Answer 4

Dec 3, 2012 10:13 PM in response to seyss

You can try selecting the files and choose "Create AAC version" from the context menu of iTunes. This usually works as it create a higher bitrate file. Still, it is not foolproof, sometimes, it may create bitrate of 80kbps or higher. iTunes match requires at least 128kbps for matching. You just have to trial and error. A third-party audio converter might also help to force convert everything to 128kbps.

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