I can't seem to find an answer on this anywhere. Does iTunes Match on an iOS device honor the "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128kbps AAC" option that you can set for the device in iTunes? A 256kbps "free (mandatory?) upgrade" would be a disaster for mobile devices with limited space, as every song would take up double the room for those like myself who use the 128kbps conversion option.
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iTunes Match and "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs"
- Thread starter brianus
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The only way that iTunes Match will work and still use the 128 kbps option is if you turn on iTunes Match on your computer ONLY and not on your device. You will have the advantage of a backup to all of you songs and get the ability to upgrade songs to 256 kbps on your COMPUTER, but you will lose the ability to download songs to your device on the fly.
If you turn on iTunes Match on your device, you lose lose the ability to sync via usb to iTunes (and thus lose the 128 kbps conversion option) and all of your existing songs on your device get wiped out entirely (assuming in 128 kbps) and "replaced" by the iTunes Match 256 kbps version (for those that matched to iTunes store versions at least), which will have the amounts of songs that can be stored physically on the device.
This is a MAJOR bummer for me as well - I hope at some time in the future that Apple implements being able to sync via usb (and use the 128 kpbs conversion option) for songs you want physically stored on your device semi-permanently, while also using the iTunes Match on your device for ADDITIONAL songs that you want to listen to on the fly.
That said, given the way Apple does things, there is no way that will ever happen, given that Apple would probably consider this a step backward.
Tony
I'm in the same boat here, unfortunately. I'd really really really like to have the best of both worlds: full library in my pocket with iTunes Match, but still be able to carry a good chunk of my library locally by down converting on sync.
I was hoping it would be similar to how it was before when you purchased something on the device. It would download from the iTunes store in full quality but when you synced back up to your computer, it would transfer the purchases to the computer, remove them from your device, then replace them with down-converted ones. Too bad it's not the case.
I guess this is all part of the "Truth is in the Cloud" concept. I'll have to see what I can get away with. Just wish I had unlimited data now...
I was hoping it would be similar to how it was before when you purchased something on the device. It would download from the iTunes store in full quality but when you synced back up to your computer, it would transfer the purchases to the computer, remove them from your device, then replace them with down-converted ones. Too bad it's not the case.
I guess this is all part of the "Truth is in the Cloud" concept. I'll have to see what I can get away with. Just wish I had unlimited data now...
Well, I just tried to force iTunes to convert my iTunes Match 256K files to 128K on my iPhone. No luck. I turned off iTunes match on my iPhone, disabled the conversion to 128K in iTunes and synced. This gave me the 256K versions of the songs on my iPhone. I then turned on the conversion to 128K in iTunes and did another sync and my phone still has the 256K versions of the songs. Do you think this might be a bug?
Actually, I'd be happy with them disabling the local sync option (though I do view it as unnecessary; if Apple doesn't care which copy, theirs or yours, of a song you use in iTunes, it shouldn't care about in iOS either). What they really should do is put a little switch or slider in the iOS Settings app under iTunes match that lets you pick the bitrate to download from their servers. So, for instance, you could have, say, 256kbps on your Mac, 192kbps on your iPad and 128kbps on your phone, at your discretion. I'm sure they already have multiple different copies of their iTunes store songs at different bitrates, and I can't see why they couldn't have the iCloud service downconvert non-matched songs stored on their servers on the fly, too.
I've been saying this since Match was still in beta, they need to allow both USB cable and wifi syncing to local libraries. The inability to sync music and requiring all iOS songs to come from Apple's servers is ridiculous. Getting the songs is much slower, it wastes a huge amount of internet traffic (and some people have monthly data caps), and if your internet goes down you can't put songs on your device even though the hard drive with all the songs is sitting right there.
Apple just needs to have the device look for the local network and if the songs are available locally download them from there, if they're not THEN get them from their servers. I wonder if they'll wise up and change this or stubbornly force people to accept a downgrade in the user experience.