Can you download iTunes matched songs easily?

[the8thark]

I own a lot of music CDs. The physical CDs that is. By a lot I mean well over 500 of them. All of them store bought. And I have most of them ripped to my iMac. But I have them ripped in a lowish bit rate. Mostly 128 - 192 kbps. And I'd like to use iTunes to be able to upgrade them to 256 kbps and download the lot so I have the 256 kbps files on my iMac. As in I want the files on my iMac. I don't really want (or have a need for) the songs in the cloud feature.

1. Is what I want to do possible?

2. If what I want to do is possible, is there an easy way to do this?

3. Is doing this worth spending $30+ for the iTunes match subscription or should I just spend all the time to re-rip all the CDs at 256 kbps. This would be a time vs money issue as ripping 500+ CDs would take a long time

 

[BrianBaughn]

What you're describing is pretty easy to do but with at least a couple of possible occasional hitches that I've seen: one is that some songs don't match for some reason and are uploaded. Might be one or two on an album...but the vast majority or my albums matched 100% with no problems. Another is song versions matching incorrectly which is more rare but hard to spot.

To replace songs with a matched ones you just have to select the songs, delete them (but not choose delete in icloud), then click the download symbol. It's easy and much easier than re-ripping everything.