Songs downgraded to 128 kb/s

[Nermal]

I got my first iPhone yesterday and since I was at the office at the time, I went into iTunes on the phone and selected Purchases. I then downloaded my purchases to the phone.

I noticed that some of the files were smaller than I expected. Once I got home I found that at least one album had been downloaded as 128 kb/s DRM AAC, while the original version on my computer was 256 kb/s DRM-free. Furthermore, after synching I now have both versions on my phone!

Has anyone else run into this?

 

[doobs]

Yes, I have this problem. Some songs have iCloud status "purchased", yet when I delete/redownload they are 128kbps. Apple states that all such purchased files will be 256kbps and they are legally obligated to fulfill their end of the paid service. Perhaps related to this, I am also having trouble downloading these songs (and a few others) onto my iPhone. The cloud shows next to the song on iPhone with iTunes Match on, but when I click it to download, it cancels out (i.e., cloud dims then comes back to allow me to try again). I suspect these are simple bugs associated with the release of a service that, at least upon initial upload of files, is data intensive for the servers.

 

[pooryou]

If the album is mono then it will effectively be half the bitrate. So a mono track at the normal iTunes encoding of 256k will be 128k. I have no idea if this applies to the problem you are having but it seems plausible.

 

[Nermal]

The album is not mono and even then it doesn't explain where the DRM came from. Other downloads have come through correctly as 256 kb/s and DRM-free.

I just remembered that when I originally set up the phone yesterday, I got an error after entering my Apple ID (I think it was "ds cannot be null" or something similar). Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I might try a restore tonight, while the phone's still "fresh" and I haven't filled it up with customisations.

Edit: Or I can just not worry about it since I've synched from the computer now. I don't actually need to do OTA downloads now!

 

[pooryou]

Hm must be an error. iTunes is far from infallible, alas.

 

[doobs]

The album is not mono and even then it doesn't explain where the DRM came from. Other downloads have come through correctly as 256 kb/s and DRM-free.

Same here. I have two songs on the same album as the one screwing up. Both songs are stereo, however, the 128kbps song has FairPlay Version number (i.e., DRM) and is a Protected AAC audio file.

 

[doobs]

When I delete the songs that are showing up as 128kbps then re-download within iTunes, I get an 8364 error. In order to get it to download again (as 128kbps still) without the error, I have to go through "Download previous purchases" in the iTunes Store.