I'll try what you said about how you fixed the live albums. I've got a few albums that refuse to play gapless through Match but they do fine when I play straight from the Mac. I'll delete and re-match them tonight and see if it works. The AC/DC issue you had was one I also experienced (same album).
I've been all over the internet for months and months trying to find a solution to the mismatching problem regarding the Beatles, which is a solution that I could hopefully apply to many other albums/tracks. The only workaround I found was a pretty intense way of "tricking" the store to upload tracks, but we (the customers) shouldn't have to do that.
I get that Apple doesn't want a "force upload" option, because they don't want all their customers uploading 25k songs to their servers. I'd be happy with having a "force upload" option with maybe a 3-5k song limit.
Also, the idea of "guiding" the store to match the track to the proper Store track would be great. That option would solve 98% of my problems.
I think what bugs me the most is the lack of acknowledgment. I waited anxiously for iTunes 11 hoping it would fix it (even though I admit I never saw any rumors about Match being updated), and even renewed my Match subscription. Unfortunately, the issue wasn't addressed. I'm going to continue on a daily basis to keep an eye out for any info on how to fix the issue without having to resort to trickery.
……….
But anyway, I'm not trying to derail the thread. Regarding the Beatles specifically, it bugs me to no end that I can't listen to a few of their albums straight through without experiencing the stereo/mono/stereo, etc. issue. I considered paying for a few specific tracks to ensure a proper match, but honestly, those box sets (I have the stereo and mono!) are expensive. I've spent quite enough on the Fab Four. 😀
The funny/sad thing is that I actually *prefer* the mono recordings. I added those to my library first, but then when I matched them they matched to the stereo versions, so I ended up taking the mono versions out of my library since they were (in most cases) duplicate tracks as far as iTunes Match was concerned. I just listed to those on CD now, which defeats the purpose of the mobile service of course.
........
I feel I should also point out that when iTunes Match works, it works GREAT. Other than what I've mentioned in this thread, I'm very happy with the service. Unfortuantely the issue I'm having is a major one.