Product attributes not being added orders_products_attributes for mp3 download

Hello,
I created an excel population program for a client and it allows them to populate their database with mp3's. I made sure to match everything up exactly. The product views work correctly as does the adding to cart process. However when the user checks out none of the attributes are being passed to the orders class - I tried to track it down through the classes to see where the attributes are assigned in the first place but I was unsuccessful.

Here is a more precise explanation of what I am having trouble with - I looked at the orders.php class and found that it looks for $this->products[$i]['attributes'] in order to add the download information to orders_products_attributes and orders_products_attributes_download. It never populates $this->products[$i]['attributes'] array with information - it seems that their may be a configuration option that is not on or something because each product has a row in each of the attributes tables (attributes, attributes_downloads, etc) I don't have the database in front of me but I am sure that the database is not the problem.

The answers I am looking for is - what configuration options could be missing. And where are the attributes defined for $this->products during the checkout process? orders.php, header.php in checkout_confirm or something? I spent 4 hours last night trying to reverse engineer the checkout process to see where the misstep was but I could not find where the attributes where supposed to get defined for the products during the checkout process.

If you look in orders.php class and see where it checks for attributes something like if(count($this->products[$i]['attributes']) or something you will see that it is there that the orders_products_attributes is supposed to be populated - however since they never get defined in the product during the checkout process it never makes it inside of that clause.

Thanks for any help - I'd like to figure out this last step.