Why are my mp3's and m4a files no longer recognized?

All of a sudden, 95% of the 10,000 music tracks in my iTunes Library has become unplayable. It concerns mp3 and m4a files with music that I purchased and ripped over the years. Wifi syncing to my iPhone 4s made it worse: now the Music app on my iPhone won't play them either.
All tracks added before Mid September 2012 are dead. They can be seen in the library and metadata can be read in iTunes. But when I click on the file, nothing happens. Newer files do play normally, though. MP3's that were not located in the iTunes library also still are playable.
I tried opening the files with VLC player, Quicktime and even on a windows machine. All I get is a message that songitle.mp3 cannot be played because it's format is not recognised.
It has been over a week since I first noticed the problem and I spend many late hours. What is going on? Has Spotlight messed with my music's metadata? Is Apple denying me access to my own files? HELP!
What I tried:
- restore files from Time Machine backup: same problem
- play files on other machines: same problem
- repair a file with MP3 Scan+Repair. It says: ERROR: Unknown file format!
- decrypt HD by disabling FileVault: no improvement and Time Machine won't work anymore (Stupid)
- do a fresh install of Mountain Lion: no improvement
- restore files from Carbon Copy Clone: same problem (has Spotlight done this while indexing the external HDD?
- boot from the Carbon Copy Clone (turned out impossible due to the Verbatim external drive that won't boot-should have tested that before I ran into trouble )
- find solutions in apple discussions, google etc for almost ten days: no solution
What struck me in Console
Some messages in Console struck me, but did not lead me to any useful clues:
25-11-12 22:33:48,000 kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(317) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
26-11-12 21:06:44,919 sandboxd[970]: ([963]) QuickTime Player(963) deny file-read-data /Users/MyName/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Folder/Album/Song.mp3
25-11-12 22:51:01,030 mdwrite[422]: *** Assertion failure in +[MDKeyRing _copyKeychainAtURL:canCreate:], /SourceCache/Spotlight/Spotlight-707.3/xpc-services/mdwrite/MDKeyRing.m:131
25-11-12 22:53:18,757 mdwrite[525]: Metadata.framework [Fatal]: Couldn't add Spotlight Metadata Privacy password to keychain! [osErr:-50]
26-11-12 21:19:59,863 com.apple.PassXPCService[1166]: PAPassValidator: _signatureIsValid failed to load signature file
Software Versions:
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
iTunes 10.7 (21)
Quicktime Version 10.2 (603.6)
On iPhone 4S: iOS 6.0.1
Hardware
MBP 13" Late 2011,
2.8 GHz Intel Core\
6 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

You're welcome: I am happy you are thinking along.
We may me on to something: I could not access my account on Sep 11 and did a restore from TM. It did not go too smoothly, but it worked. That's when I decided to pick up the habit of making carbon clone copies again.
Now if something would have been wrong with the songs in the iTunes/Music folder, it must have been copied just as wrong to the carbon clone. Hence the reason why my backed up songs won't play. So you could be right that the files were probably messed up Mid September and not just two weeks ago.
But why haven't I noticed it before? Probably because all the music I like to hear is in my iPhone, that apperently doesn't do to many wifi syncing? It is strange though that for two months I could still play the music on my iPhone.
What did happen just before I could not play them anymore, was the iOS update to 6.0.1. My phone's battery was draining fast and it became hot. Maybe the phone's Spotlight had to re-index? I don't know.
FV was there since Jan, when I set up this machine. I did not run some kind of utility particularly on my music files.
I think you are wise to stick to your OS version as long as it works well. Upgrading usually comes with some issues.
About my setup:
I started out on another MBP (mid 2009) with 10.5. Upgraded to 10.6 then to 10.7. Had some kernel panic issues, but solved them.The machine got stolen in January and I got my current MBP (late 2011) with 10.7 on it that I upgraded to 10.8 this summer. I started using FV in Jan with the new machine. The theft made me wonder if I shouldn't be more Utilities I use ever so infrequently:
Onyx
Drive Genius
ClamAV
Carbon Copy Cloner.
Syncing/Backup takes place to
Time Machine (full drive)
iCloud (limited data)
SugarSync (limited data)
Dropbox (limited data)
Google Drive (limited data)
Carbon Copy Cloner (full drive)
Other things:
I put a hardware password on my laptop and a use Prey tracking software (not that it helped me to find back my old laptop btw)
I can't remember what utility I was running at the time of the lockout in September. Maybe there was something like Drive Genius running when I had to close my MBP and leave. But since the music on my TM has the same problem, the whole lockout may not be the reason of the corrupted songs.
Perhaps I should just accept my losses. I found an older backup with the oldest 90% of the songs that work. It's just that I am curious to know what went wrong to keep it from happening again.
About moving to another forum: what do you think would be the best choice? OS X Mountain Lion?

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* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
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package mythreadone;
* @author Administrator
public class MyThreadOne implements Runnable {
String tName;
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???No.
>
How to explain my second quesiton then? Why the main thread always terminates before some of the child threads end? Thanks a lot.

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Message was edited by: 2point5

Why are my mp3's and m4a files no longer recognized?

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