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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)

#91

Post by perching_aix »

dylan604 wrote: post #90
perching_aix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wi…

It's also basic etiquette to not assume malice or that the other party is lying, but you explicitly and proudly continue to fail at that. So it's a bit tough for me to accept criticism from you regarding this.

> the reading comprehension of everyone is so bad

No, I am not saying this. This is just your headcanon, it is not even a remotely necessary presumption to have.

> You didn’t have to reply to my comment.

I felt compelled to after being told that I'm "moving goalposts". Obviously. Again, a subjectively perceived need.

> based on now understanding the full context of the conversation that your comment is out of place and have a nice day

Even with the additional context your original comment still rings unreasonable and self-absorbed. It is true however that I do not need you to explain why anymore. Have a nice day indeed.

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

#92

Post by quesomaster9000 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #25

Anyone uploading audio different platforms might find Streamliner useful (I'm nowhere near the point where details on that level matter). https://adptraudio.com/product/streamliner/ It's wild how many details sound people have to keep track of. I know when I upload to Youtube things get smoothed noticeably compared to say Soundcloud. Probably because I've mastered over their -14 LUFS requirement. I wonder how much of…

With SoundCloud I've found you have to pay for the 'Plus+++' subscription or whatever it is to not get audio with the higher frequencies absolutely butchered, unless you follow a very specific upload process that bypasses their conversion.

Upload 320kbit encoded MP3? Sounds great.

Upload a high-khz WAV? It gets butchered, the top-end turns to glittery noise.

Maybe others have different experiences, but honestly it felt like I'd been duped when paying for the subscription but still got trash quality audio, only to have to pay more.

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

#93

Post by out_of_protocol »

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.

Regular user can get up to YT-251, which is described in article, ~135kbps opus (i think target is higher, 160 kbps or so). But bitrate itself is good enough - on good headphones I can't distinguish flac vs opus-110kbps, except very rare killer samples. And YouTube audio clearly lacks detail despite having higher bitrate. So, probably, 256 kbps would not help much

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

#94

Post by jorvi »

cogman10 wrote: post #39
jorvi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audio data is miniscule compared to the video data, and the size of it is tied to the video quality level. And everything is streamed in chunks. It'd only amount to milliseconds of extra buffering.

Not as insignificant as you might imagine, especially if you are talking about surround sound audio. With newer codecs, doing 4k with 2Mb/s isn't unheard of. For audio, on the other hand, 32 or 64kbps per channel isn't unheard of.

At 1080p60, YouTube uses 12Mbps, and 251Kbps Opus or 192Kbps AAC. That's a factor 50 smaller. Insignificant.

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

#95

Post by danadam »

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…

> 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).

Maybe with a browser that doesn't support Opus and gets AAC instead (Safari?). With Firefox or Chromium on Linux I get up to 20 kHz, which by design is the upper limit in Opus codec.

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

#96

Post by danadam »

naltroc wrote: post #88
nayuki wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

If you put something above 16 kHz at full scale and/or if you play it extremely loud then maybe. With typical music content at typical volumes, I doubt it.

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

#97

Post by out_of_protocol »

jorvi wrote: post #94
cogman10 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as insignificant as you might imagine, especially if you are talking about surround sound audio. With newer codecs, doing 4k with 2Mb/s isn't unheard of. For audio, on the other hand, 32 or 64kbps per channel isn't unheard of.

At 1080p60, YouTube uses 12Mbps, and 251Kbps Opus or 192Kbps AAC. That's a factor 50 smaller. Insignificant.

251 is codec format ID. Real bitrate is around ~135 kbps

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

#98

Post by out_of_protocol »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #55
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…

Lossy codecs at 120-190k in 2022 are probably transparent.

Opus _IS_ transparent at 128 kbps, big IF - encoded properly. YouTube does some weird shit instead of just reencoding

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

#100

Post by cogman10 »

jorvi wrote: post #94
cogman10 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as insignificant as you might imagine, especially if you are talking about surround sound audio. With newer codecs, doing 4k with 2Mb/s isn't unheard of. For audio, on the other hand, 32 or 64kbps per channel isn't unheard of.

At 1080p60, YouTube uses 12Mbps, and 251Kbps Opus or 192Kbps AAC. That's a factor 50 smaller. Insignificant.

> At 1080p60, YouTube uses 12Mbps

It does not. That's a recommended bitrate for a live streamer (Streamer -> youtube).

Coming out of youtube, the numbers are quiet different.

For example, a random 4k video I just pulled had a video bitrate of 4.5Mbps.

A 720p video I pulled of a talking head had a 369kbps video stream.

That is to say, a podcast style video is likely to have a nearly 50:50 split on audio/video.

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