iTunes Match matches wrong version of tracks

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Level 1

4 points

iTunes Match matches wrong version of tracks

(This question has been asked before, but the usually suggestion solution - convert to AAC - doesn't work for me.)

iTunes Match has matched several tracks in my library with different versions of the tracks in question. This is nothing new, and as I understand it the matching is done using an audio fingerprint, so obviously with a bit of 'fuzziness' in this matching process, mis-matches can occur. For example, (one that is particularly annoying to me) Diamond Dogs by David Bowie, track 2 of the Diamond Dogs album, is matched as the single version from ChangesOneBowie with the fade-in, which ruins the gapless transition from the previous track Future Legend (grr). This is despite the metadata for the source track being track 2 of the Diamond Dogs album, but I'm assuming metadata is ignored for the purposes of matching.

In terms of rectifying this, and other, mis-matches many of them are direct-to-AAC rips from CD, so the usual accepted answer won't work for me. Is there any other way of sorting this out? Is it be possible to add an inaudible watermark of some kind that would disrupt the audio fingerprinting, and how would you go about this?

If anybody has had any luck with this, I would love to hear about it.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Oct 12, 2018 4:08 AM

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Answer 1

moidah Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 8, 2018 3:24 AM in response to moidah

Just as a FYI:

After some experimentation, I found that adding a relatively low-volume, low-frequency sound to a track that was previously 'Matched' can then cause it to be 'Uploaded' instead. Obviously, the additional sound must be not be noticeable, and in my case I got a short (<1s) audio file, used Audacity to 'Change Speed' to slow it enough to cover the length of the track, and set it at -12dB and this changed the audio fingerprint enough to confuse the matcher.

To create this additional 'watermark' you would want to avoid high frequencies in the original clip so that when it is slowed down they won't appear in the middle of the audible spectrum. I just ran

`say "oh baby" -o "~/Desktop/watermark.aiff"`

which created a suitable 0.75s file (a short phrase with no sibilance and hence few high frequencies.) Slowed down to 3 minutes and at -12dB, the sound was barely perceptible on its own, and could not be detected at all within the mix, but was disruptive enough it seems.

I wouldn't want to batch-process all the files in my iTunesMatch library obviously, but it looks like I can at least force it to upload individual tracks that it has mis-matched. 🙂

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Answer 2

Oct 13, 2018 1:15 AM in response to moidah

Hi,

Metadata is not used to determine whether a song is matched or not.

A suggestion for the David Bowie tracks is to combine the tracks and this will mean the track will be uploaded. For other tracks you could try adding silence at beginning of track which could result in track being uploaded.

Jim

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Answer 3

moidah Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2018 3:01 AM in response to Jimzgoldfinch

Thanks Jimzgoldfinch,

Yes, that would work for most cases, I guess. Although, I've since noticed that there is the 'opposite' problem where the version of "Ticket To The Moon" by ELO off a best-of, i.e. the single version, has been replaced by the album version which doesn't fade out. In that case the tracks aren't the same length, they are different by about 5 seconds, so you might need to add a fair amount of silence to throw off the fuzzy match. *sigh*

I still like the idea of trying to change the audio fingerprint, if only because it'll be fun to see if you can fox the iTunes Match matcher!

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iTunes Match matches wrong version of tracks

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