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YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

audiomisc.co.uk

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Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#81

Post by concerndc1tizen »

mrob wrote: post #34
lazka wrote: post #8

See "Why not use graphs / frequency analysis to compare codecs?" https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=FAQ#:~:text=Why%... "I decided that analysis should focus on the higher, more conventional rates – 48k and 44k1" - opus is always 48khz, so that doesn't mean much.

This. Your ears are not an oscilloscope. Lossy audio codecs are designed to exploit two major weaknesses in human hearing: 1. Poor sensitivity in bass and treble. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour 2. Limited ability to hear multiple sounds simultaneously, or almost simultaneously. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking Bernhard Seeber has some videos on Youtube with demonstrations…

I wonder how many people there are, that don't have these weaknesses.

And who are therefore forced to hear terrible audio because the compression method only considers the majority.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#82

Post by mrob »

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #81
mrob wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Your ears are not an oscilloscope. Lossy audio codecs are designed to exploit two major weaknesses in human hearing: 1. Poor sensitivity in bass and treble. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour 2. Limited ability to hear multiple sounds simultaneously, or almost simultaneously. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking Bernhard Seeber has some videos on Youtube with demonstrations…

I wonder how many people there are, that don't have these weaknesses. And who are therefore forced to hear terrible audio because the compression method only considers the majority.

If people have notches in their hearing sensitivity at low or mid frequencies, sounds at those frequencies might fail to mask other sounds as expected. You could simulate this by applying notch filters to otherwise transparent lossy audio and seeing if it exposes compression artifacts. But I think this kind of hearing loss is uncommon. Normal age-related hearing loss does not cause any problems with lossy audio compression.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#83

Post by TonyTrapp »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #70
togetheragainor wrote: post #22

For music listening, the YouTube Music app has settings for higher audio quality under "Settings > Playback". According to their documentation, this is "Upper bound of 256kbps AAC & OPUS": https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9076559?hl=en... EDIT: FWIW, I'm a Premium member. I'm not sure if this is a standard feature.

Wondering if yt-dlp picks up the higher codec formats too.

You can easily verify that: yt-dlp -F link-to-youtube-video

-F (uppercase!) lists all available audio and video formats to download.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#84

Post by TonyTrapp »

jeffbee wrote: post #38
togetheragainor wrote: post #22

For music listening, the YouTube Music app has settings for higher audio quality under "Settings > Playback". According to their documentation, this is "Upper bound of 256kbps AAC & OPUS": https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9076559?hl=en... EDIT: FWIW, I'm a Premium member. I'm not sure if this is a standard feature.

The worse problem for YouTube Music is that some of the source material is not the same as what you may have on physical media. There are entire labels that provide worse or at least different materials than they published to record stores. And then there is remaster roulette. What am I going to hear if I press play on "Rumours": the original that was born perfect, or one of the half-dozen remasters that have been is…

This affects all digital stores. Many labels appear to have lost their uncompressed masters, especially for stuff that was released on the internet in the early 2000s. I regularly catch them pants down when trying to buy something through digital music stores as lossless and I receive a FLAC file that shows clear signs of MP3 compression. It usually results in a refund from the store in question. For this reason I'm buying less and less through those stores, and try to hunt down cheap used CD copies instead, if at all possible.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#85

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

exodust wrote: post #71
xipix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're learning guitar, drums, piano, trumpet, etc, you'll want to start playing along at about 75% speed then work up until you can play 110% faster than you need to. YouTube's built in audio time stretch makes this a painful exercise.

What's the benefit of learning to play faster than you need to? I understand wanting to play slower, but why faster?

Reliability builds on skill redundancy.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#86

Post by jpc0 »

Arech wrote: post #76
mrob wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Your ears are not an oscilloscope. Lossy audio codecs are designed to exploit two major weaknesses in human hearing: 1. Poor sensitivity in bass and treble. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour 2. Limited ability to hear multiple sounds simultaneously, or almost simultaneously. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking Bernhard Seeber has some videos on Youtube with demonstrations…

The problem with these weaknesses is that they are different in each human being. For me listening an mp3 is like a sanding an ear, while some don't even hear the difference between it and a live performance.

> For me listening an mp3 is like a sanding an ear

There is such a broad spectrum in thr word mp3 that you need to be more specific. I can absolutely pick the difference between certian high bitrate mp3 encodings and wav files, however a different mp3 with exactly the same bitrate, effectively indistinguishable.

Bad mp3 encoding is a problem, not one I have experienced recently though. I think the bigger issue is people will rip a music video from youtube, then instead of extracting the existing audio stream into it's own container will reencode it. Mp3->mp3 encoding will be lossy just like any other encoder.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#87

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

xyst wrote: post #53

Billions of dollars at their disposal. A near monopsony or just massive buyer of infrastructure, and some of the smartest people in the space. Yet the best they could do in 2022 is lossy codec at 120-190 bit rate? I got better audio quality ripping songs from limewire or Napster in the 2000s. Why do we settle with this substandard quality? Oh wait, YT barely has any competition and subsidized by G. No need for compet…

> I got better audio quality ripping songs from limewire or Napster in the 2000s.

Nah, you didn't, at least not reliably. Half of that were recodes and upcodes that used Blade, FhG or Xing.

Only with torrent technology and community-driven trackers we got reliable distribution that surpassed the official non-physical channels.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#88

Post by naltroc »

nayuki wrote: post #68
naltroc wrote: post #52

When I use an FFT to view the spectrogram on YouTube music videos, it is very obvious that YouTube applies a lowpass filter at 16kHz on all videos (true since 2023 at least). While this does retain the majority of useful information, it explains why the youtube version of your song feels just a little more 'lifeless' than the high quality version you have elsewhere. The original recording contains high frequency deta…

> it explains why the youtube version of your song feels just a little more 'lifeless' than the high quality version you have elsewhere Having hearing sensitivity over 16 kHz is unusual. If you're under 15 years old and kept your ears pristine by not listening to loud noises, you might be able to hear it. Older people are out of luck. Moreover, even if you can hear above 16 kHz in loud pure tones, there is so little…

It is true that your ears do not perceive the higher frequencies in the same way (through pitch detection). However, if you put on a headset and apply only frequencies above 16kHz, you will distinctly notice a change in the pressure in your headset's ear cups.

Good point about the savings. I was using uncompressed format as the reference, but it is indeed unlikely that YouTube serves out lossless audio.

I also should have used the word "delivery" instead of data storage. Those are two separate problems: where the original asset is stored (and how, if they don't store raw originals), and also how the asset is delivered over the web.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#89

Post by ballooney »

exodust wrote: post #71
xipix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're learning guitar, drums, piano, trumpet, etc, you'll want to start playing along at about 75% speed then work up until you can play 110% faster than you need to. YouTube's built in audio time stretch makes this a painful exercise.

What's the benefit of learning to play faster than you need to? I understand wanting to play slower, but why faster?

You want to play within your abilities, not right at the very edge of them. This technique nudges the edges out.

Re: YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)

#90

Post by dylan604 »

perching_aix wrote: post #80
dylan604 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The niche was for the people using YT to learn to play a song. You’re now applying to something else, so that’s a bit of goal post moving. Also, your use of need is odd as well, and seem to have convinced yourself that the world is wrong and only you’re right. If it needed, the creators would have made it that way

> Also, your use of need is odd as well, and seem to have convinced yourself that the world is wrong and only you’re right. If it needed, the creators would have made it that way It's called having personal experiences and an opinion. You should try them sometime. It's almost as if appropriate tempo was in the "eye" of the "viewer", and so I was very clearly not suggesting my needs and essentials are universal object…

> If I was being extra prickly, I'd accuse you of intentionally writing in a way so that you could accuse me of strawmanning you later

That’s the most bizarre comment I think I’ve ever seen. You didn’t have to reply to my comment. You’re now saying that I assume that the reading comprehension of everyone is so bad that I make comments specifically as gotchas. WTF is that logic? People that post comments in threads without taking the whole thread into consideration are like people that butt their way into a conversation based on the last sentence heard. It never goes well. It’s called social etiquette.

Just admit you didn’t read the full thread and that based on now understanding the full context of the conversation that your comment is out of place and have a nice day

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