Re-ripping Music
This time yesterday I was pretty much cussing out iTunes Match because of the issues I was having with getting it to stop hanging, cooperate and work. Today's another story since it's working pretty much seamlessly...like all Apple products should. I'm guessing the load on Apple's servers has subsided a bit and iTunes Match is running a little more like it should, and will going forward.
So I decided to experiment a bit with some of my music files. Early on...years ago. I ripped a lot of my CD's using iTune's default setting which back then was 128kbps AAC. This meant more compression and lower audio quality than the original CD certainly and less than I could have used...but it worked and I was happy. Now all iTunes music that's "matched" to your iTunes library will download to any of your iTunes Matched enabled devices at 256kbps...less compression, improved audio quality. That includes the music that you've already uploaded...and which still resides on your computer at 128kbps.
Time to "upgrade" some of my iTunes library! I found an old Eagles album which I had ripped at 128kbps. In the music list view I highlighted all of the songs on the album, control-clicked (right clicked) and clicked on "Delete". The following confirmation appeared:
I clicked on "Delete Songs"...but I did NOT check the "Also delete these songs from iCloud" box. Then this message appeared:
I clicked on "Keep Files". Immediately the bit rate column changed from 128kbps to 256kbps and the little iCloud download icon showed up:
I subsequently clicked on each iCloud download icon and tah-dah...I now have a perfect copy of the same music at the higher 256kbps bit rate without having to re-rip my CD! It's by no means CD quality, but it's certainly an improvement.
The downloads started immediately and were quite fast.
So today I'm a little happier with iTunes Match and tomorrow I'm sure I'll be more of a fan.
NOTE: Updating/re-downloading songs originally ripped at 128kbps at 256kpbs will require approximately twice the storage space so be sure you have enough hard drive space prior if you think that will be an issue.