Can I upgrade unmatched tracks?

Hi,

If a track is not matched, the only way to improve the quality is to re-rip the tracks as either 256 Kbps MP3 or AAC. Once done, I don't think it is important if a track is matched or not bearing in mind that matched tracks are 256 Kbps AAC.

You can try deleting the original and reimporting the tracks but there no guarantee that you will get a match.

Jim

Hi,

If you delete the original and re-rip the tracks, iTunes match will rescan the new tracks to determine if the tracks can be matched or will be uploaded again. At least if you have re-ripped them at a better bit rate, the tracks uploaded will be better than the your previous rips.

Jim

Match isn't so much seeing things as a track in iTunes it is seeing it as a file entered in iTunes. My understanding is if you took a file and duplicated it 5 times Match would compare all 5 files. It isn't seeing it as "Hey Junde" by "The Beatles", it is seeing it as a file. For that matter I believe Match is really using audio fingerprinting to identify the file so even if you renamed a track Match will still come up with the actual corresponding file, not how you renamed it. If you re-rip a track Match is comparing that file, not saying, "This is a replacement for the other one called XYZ".

Actually it sounds like what Henk is asking is whether iTunes will re-upload the same track at a higher bit rate or go ahead and match to the already uploaded file. I have found that even tracks deleted from your cloud library can linger in the cloud for a while, and Match will often recover the previous uploads in the cloud and match to them instead of re-uploading. Maybe this is something they have improved over the years, but you'd have to try it to find out. Try a track or two and see. When I re-upload tracks that I have previously deleted, I usually have to rip them in a different format (MP3 instead of AAC, or WAV instead of MP3, etc.) to force the Match mechanism to do a new upload from scratch. Maybe a new bitrate works the same way.