IPhone – iTunes Match not downloading high bitrate version of songs

My understanding (although not precise science) so far with Match knows the song signature and uses this in conjunction with the track length to match against their database.

This would explain why some songs get replaced with explicit versions on Match while renaming one song to another (incorrect) does not trick Match into thinking it is a new song. You can test both quite easily

• the former by deleting a non explicit matched song (remembering track length) and pulling it back from iCloud
• the latter by ripping a CD without any info into Track01...02 etc and have it matched correctly.

all the above is somehow tied with Genius.

With the above assumption, to keep your proper version try padding out the length, add noise, or combine the track with the next (if it belongs to an album) and it should cause enough difference to be uploaded instead of being matched.

You could use a different media player app that does not use the iPhone music library but uses it's on memory. Then you can upload your lossless music files to that app and play it. Something like AnyPlayer might be suitable.

Or, if you have a dropbox account, you might find songbox helpful.