Heh, iTunes. Since I have accrued some credit, seems also I deserve the blame
The new version of iTunes is definitely a pain in the ass. Still trying to dial much of it in as well. Far as I understand it, yes -- if you're getting the dreaded cloud icon beside a track, that means that iTunes is convinced it is not a local copy but resident off in Apple's proprietary ether and: (a) it is streaming it from this wherever, (b) it is NOT lossless, and (c) it very well may be further polluted by Apple's digital rights management (DRM) scheme. This third point, DRM, is where you can run afoul of BitPerfect, as it can't handle DRM material. Think it is supposed to hand playback back to iTunes when it encounters one -- so that it can actually go -- but in my experience, it just won't play the DRM stuff.
The more sticky question may be why iTunes has apparently substituted things that you previously had local copies of (presumably lossless local copies ripped from CD, for example) with the cloud copies. Hopefully, this isnt the case. I understand that there is a new feature in iTunes that basically moves all of your stuff onto the cloud so that all accounts have access to the same library. Fine, sounds super, in typical Apple faux-helpfulness mode. Trouble is, these cloud-resident copies will not be lossless (think they are AAC, not sure which bitrate). So, if youve started with a lossless copy and then moved to the cloud, Apple has kindly down-sampled and down-graded your software. Significantly. You would prefer to avoid this. And to further complicate matters, if you actually click on the cloud icon beside a track, Apple with kindly download this track from the cloud to your local drive. However, it will still be the lossy version that started on the cloud.
None of this, to the best of my knowledge, should replace anything that you have locally. For example, I dont buy anything off of iTunes. And I have placed nothing on the cloud. However, my wife regularly does, and we use the same account (which is real convenient in every other way). But, this means that my iTunes includes all of the material she has purchased. In the previous versions of iTunes, all of the stuff she purchased was not visible on the Mini, because none of it had been downloaded there (but I could access her library, which is on a separate computer, through our shares network). However, in the new version of iTunes, EVERYTHING that has ever been purchased on the account is now visible on every instance of that account and the ones that have not been downloaded on a particular local instance are shown as being on the cloud. Thus, my new version of iTunes on the Mini is now showing hundreds of tracks on the cloud. This is a feature of the cloud Apply trying to be helpful. Further, many tracks in my main (previously entirely lossless) library are now duplicated with both my local lossless version and a cloud version (presumably because I have a lossless rip from CD and my wife at one point bought a copy of the same track from iTunes). Hopefully, this is all that has happened. I think there is a way to convince iTunes not to show anything on the cloud. This would should revert you to exactly what was there before the upgrade. Personally, Ive left all of the cloud (duplicates or otherwise) items visible so far. I am just careful not to use them, unless I mean to and there isnt another lossless copy already there.
Hopefully that made some sense and was at least vaguely helpful. (And if not, you know where to find me ;)
The more sticky question may be why iTunes has apparently substituted things that you previously had local copies of (presumably lossless local copies ripped from CD, for example) with the cloud copies. Hopefully, this isnt the case. I understand that there is a new feature in iTunes that basically moves all of your stuff onto the cloud so that all accounts have access to the same library. Fine, sounds super, in typical Apple faux-helpfulness mode. Trouble is, these cloud-resident copies will not be lossless (think they are AAC, not sure which bitrate). So, if youve started with a lossless copy and then moved to the cloud, Apple has kindly down-sampled and down-graded your software. Significantly. You would prefer to avoid this. And to further complicate matters, if you actually click on the cloud icon beside a track, Apple with kindly download this track from the cloud to your local drive. However, it will still be the lossy version that started on the cloud.
None of this, to the best of my knowledge, should replace anything that you have locally. For example, I dont buy anything off of iTunes. And I have placed nothing on the cloud. However, my wife regularly does, and we use the same account (which is real convenient in every other way). But, this means that my iTunes includes all of the material she has purchased. In the previous versions of iTunes, all of the stuff she purchased was not visible on the Mini, because none of it had been downloaded there (but I could access her library, which is on a separate computer, through our shares network). However, in the new version of iTunes, EVERYTHING that has ever been purchased on the account is now visible on every instance of that account and the ones that have not been downloaded on a particular local instance are shown as being on the cloud. Thus, my new version of iTunes on the Mini is now showing hundreds of tracks on the cloud. This is a feature of the cloud Apply trying to be helpful. Further, many tracks in my main (previously entirely lossless) library are now duplicated with both my local lossless version and a cloud version (presumably because I have a lossless rip from CD and my wife at one point bought a copy of the same track from iTunes). Hopefully, this is all that has happened. I think there is a way to convince iTunes not to show anything on the cloud. This would should revert you to exactly what was there before the upgrade. Personally, Ive left all of the cloud (duplicates or otherwise) items visible so far. I am just careful not to use them, unless I mean to and there isnt another lossless copy already there.
Hopefully that made some sense and was at least vaguely helpful. (And if not, you know where to find me ;)