kirkmc

I was going to mention that, but I couldn’t remember any specific recordings where that is done. That is the height of ludicrous.

I'm comparing any venue of pretty much any size (other than very small), where no one really hears individual instruments on one side or the other, with the approach of mixing discrete channels to a sided dominance. Grateful Dead recordings are very well mastered, but there is this odd tendency to isolate some of the instruments. But they're far from the only ones: some Brad Mehldau live recordings are like that, with the piano way off to the left, and there are plenty of others like that. Again, this is not about a conscious choice in the studio, such as by Pink Floyd, but rather a choice whe

I guess I'm not surprised that my attempt at initiating a discussion about stereo imaging and mixing has morphed into "I can hear the difference in hi-res files."

I’m not interested in discussing arcane technical matters that may or may not affect how I perceive the width of the imaging. I’m simply discussing the way certain recordings of certain instruments way off to one side. I honestly don’t care about how this is done technically, or whether it is different now than before CDs. I’m really only talking about what I hear.

I’m afraid you’re missing the point. I’m talking about exaggerated stereo separation, which is done in mixing and mastering. I’m not talking about “flat“ imaging.

What does compression have to do with stereo imaging? Imaging is essential a factor of the volume applied to each element of a recording.

I've been thinking a lot about stereo recordings lately. It seems obvious that stereo recording techniques have their good and bad points. Good stereo recordings, such as of a live orchestra, use multiple microphones to capture the music directly and indirectly (room resonance), but studio recordings often play around with instrument placement, making music sound artificial. Even some live electric recordings do this. I've been listening to the Grateful Dead June '76 box set recently, and, while the mixes are beautiful, Jerry's guitar is very far to the left and Keith's keyboards all the way t

Yes, that folder only works if it's in the folder with the library file.

That's odd. The tags should be the same as what shows in the Music app. You might try to delete all the name tags and re-enter them and see what happens.

🙂 You might want to look at the two libraries by genre; see if both have all the same genres, then select each genre and compare the number of tracks. That might give you some clues.

Hmm... I'm stumped here. Could the Mac with more files have files purchased from the iTunes Store with another Apple ID? In that case, they might not be compared.

Just a wild guess, but on the Mac in the top screenshot, in the View menu, is All Music or Only Downloaded Music selected?

So across all your Macs, there are only 7 tracks not on all of them? That's pretty good. Remember, you can always use this to compare libraries and import tracks that aren't on one of your Macs.

iTunes wants the Media folder; or, in your case, the iTunes Music folder. That's what you need to choose.

Only if you have the old app files, downloaded with the same Apple ID. You might be able to install them with iMazing.