How do I restore a complete music library from Time Machine with missing .musiclibrary files?

this is specifically for @turingtest2 if you are there! trust me i have laboured through so many posts and so many discussions on the subject, but i always come unstuck. i have just spent almost 2 hours with apple on the phone, (and i did this 2 years ago) and they cannot solve this. my 'music library' is a shambles. it is 20 years of music, downloaded, burnt, purchased you name it. it began on iTunes, and migrated to 'music' - it has been on 3 different MacBooks, including one that crashed 2 years ago. there are 'pathways' all over the place from but the actual music files are found in 'username: music: iTunes: iTunes music: music: and boom there's all my music. the difficulty comes with the .musiclibrary files, the.xml files, the .itl files. Back in 2023 we managed to pull out the hard drive and save the 200+GB of music (thankfully) but in attempting to restore the music library i lost all the metadata which was so so so bad for me. i am a dj, and 'date added' amongst other things was crucial, but everything was now date added september 2023.... anyway i had to work with that. i spent 2 more years trying to organise myself better, more tags, more genres, so much music added and all with a nice new 'date added' so i was kinda back on track. then yesterday.... the first of 5 gigs in december and i open rekordbox to move a 'music' playlist across, and 'music' crashes. and crashes again. and crashes again. i hold my head. not now please. so i quick google search and try and open 'music' holding option and restore from there. couldn't make it work. i know i need the .musiclibrary files, but i have ended up with a few of these (6? 7?) now when i navigate to them in time machine, or even using option 'open music' all these different .musiclibrary files open the same 'music'. and it is not the one that crashed yesterday. it has 5 songs from 2025, 10 songs from 2024, then 20 or so from 2023, the back to 2019. so much music not there. i have the music on my laptop (the files) but i am completely stumped (as are the apple people) as to how i can restore the library from say the time machine backup from september 2025? it just won't work, and i do not know how to do it. as i said i have navigated to about 6 different .musiclibrary files and they all open the same thing. has anyone got any ideas?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: restoring entire music library from time machine / where is the .musiclibrary file that i need? all i am getting is music opening with HEAPS of music missing - please read, it is long but it is breaking my heart