Random tracks disappearing from iTunes on purchase or sync

Question

Since iCloud has been introduced, I've had nothing but headaches keeping the songs I want on my iPhone. Until the cloud, it was simple enough. I had all my songs on my Mac. The ones I wanted on my iPhone, I checked, did a USB sync, and I was golden. Since the cloud, whenever I buy an album, either from my phone or from my computer, there are are invariably tracks that don't appear on my phone. They come, they go. You'll see the album, look down the list, and then a "Complete This Album" link, which will show you the songs you purchased but Apple thought you probably didn't want. I'm sorry for the sarcasm, but this just has me crazy. I've established that it isn't a capacity issue on the phone. I can sometimes fix the problem with a USB sync, but when I did this a couple of days ago to complete the album of Beethoven Late Quartets on the phone, I found later that the new Beck album dropped three tracks. Completely at random.
I swear I'm going to become one of those vinyl geeks pretty soon . . .
Rob

Answer 1

Hi Greg,
O.k. understood you were explaining how you import your cd's. I don't quite get the copy bit though.
My iTunes is set to import a cd into the iTunes music folder at a custom sample rate (higher than standard) you can choose this by following; iTunes, preferences, advanced, importing, then change the setting to custom for a better quality import. This is stored straight into my 'iTunes music folder', which for storage and (laughably) security reasons I have changed from the default location to a 250GB external hard drive. As far as I know iTunes only copies my cd to this location then ejects it.
I had to change the location of the Music folder by following; iTunes, preferences, advanced, general. the box will show you where your library is stored and you can change this location if you want. Once you have changed the location you will need to 'consolidate library'. Yes this does look very scary but all it really does is find all the music stored on your computer and copy it into the specified iTunes music folder location.
I bit the bullet and did a consolidate library earlier, it searched my computer and listed loads of tracks which had gone missing. I thought, great! it's just going to re-import the missing tracks but they never arrived on my track listing and the total number of tracks didn't change...
There are songs in my iTunes music folder that I can play straight from the file which will then re-appear in iTunes but it won't recognise them untill I do which is bloody annoying, but less annoying than having lost the tracks completely.
Search for your missing tracks everywhere with spotlight and if no joy considate your library, watch the screen and see what it finds. If it tries to re-import them then surely the files must still exist somewhere.
Are all your missing tracks still in the iTunes library list but marked with or have they vanished from it completely?
Good luck