What is the quality of the audio streamed with youtube videos?

[aussievintage]

I did a bit of searching and I think old historic posts are making the answer harder to find than it should be.

 

So, I figured someone here would know.  If I play a youtube video that is demoing a sound system, or playing an "audiophile" track,   what is the quality of the soundtrack I am hearing?  Lossy/compressed, sample rate/ bitrate ?

[Ittaku]

This is what my videos were reencoded to:

 

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 3 min 17 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 128 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 3.02 MiB (13%)
Title                                    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 12/09/2021.
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2021-12-09 08:32:05
Tagged date                              : UTC 2021-12-09 08:32:05

[aussievintage]

41 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

This is what my videos were reencoded to:

 

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 3 min 17 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 128 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 3.02 MiB (13%)
Title                                    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 12/09/2021.
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2021-12-09 08:32:05
Tagged date                              : UTC 2021-12-09 08:32:05

 

 

Thanks.  Yes, I did pick up on them using AAC.   There were rumours (denied in some places) that the audio quality changed with video quality choices.   Yours looks to be converted to a fairly basic quality -  128kb/s 44.1 kHz.   That's about the very minimum I would normally listen to.           I wonder if everything is all re-encoded to the same?

[Ittaku]

6 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

Thanks.  Yes, I did pick up on them using AAC.   There were rumours (denied in some places) that the audio quality changed with video quality choices.   Yours looks to be converted to a fairly basic quality -  128kb/s 44.1 kHz.   That's about the very minimum I would normally listen to.           I wonder if everything is all re-encoded to the same?

That was the highest quality audio available according to my yt downloader.

[Ian McP]

I took this youtube clip and converted the audio to WAV for cd, sound is perfectly OK for most listening.

Plus it's the only way of sourcing it, very well recorded.

Mop Mop's cd's well worth checking out too, they sound excellent plus superb musicianship, recorded mostly in the analog domain see pic

http://www.mopmop.com/

 

 

[Ian McP]

2 hours ago, aussievintage said:

I did a bit of searching and I think old historic posts are making the answer harder to find than it should be.

 

So, I figured someone here would know.  If I play a youtube video that is demoing a sound system, or playing an "audiophile" track,   what is the quality of the soundtrack I am hearing?  Lossy/compressed, sample rate/ bitrate ?

Mate of mine who's been involved in speaker building for many years thinks contrary to what you might expect listening to a youtube clip of speakers does give you some idea of what they actually sound like. Kenrick Sound had many clips up of high end JBL restorations they'd done but sadly had to remove them due to finicky music copyright rules, a few still are up.

http://jbl43.com/

here's a couple

 

 

[aussievintage]

23 minutes ago, Ian McP said:

sound is perfectly OK for most listening.

 

10 minutes ago, Ian McP said:

listening to a youtube clip of speakers does give you some idea of what they actually sound like

 

I agree, it's not too bad.  I am just trying to put some real numbers and types to what it actually is.   As much curiosity as anything else.

[emesbee]

That doesn't sound too shabby playing on my PC, sending 24bit 96khz via USB  to the DAC in a Musical Fidelity M5si driving a pair of VAF i91s. 

How close it sounds to the speakers in the videos would be debateable though, since what I am hearing is coming from my amp and speakers.

 

[Steffen]

To me, all Youtube audio always sounds like it’s coming from iPad speakers.

 

Because it is  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Steffen
tpyo/gremmer

[Nada]

Quote

Youtube uses two types of audio formats – AAC (wrapped in an MP4 container) or Opus in a WebM container. For AAC, Youtube will play a maximum audio bitrate of around 126 kbps. For Opus, it can be between 56 kbps and 165 kbps.

[Nada]

Above is confirmed by saving audio from Youtube in "Opus 160" that is actually:

 

[Nada]

The lossy low bit rate is more then compensated by some wonderful live recording with minimal sound engineering and  some excellent DR possible eg

 

[Nada]

[tripitaka]

In the days before streaming, I found a way to access higher quality audio from YouTube, but I can't remember how it's done now (it was a real rigmarole).

Sorry that isn't much help

[tripitaka]

Hang on, found my notes.

You can access the original upload quality (often very good, though not always).

 

Copy the clip URL to keepdownloading.com which gives you a WEBA file which you can convert to FLAC using on online converter like

http://online-audio-converter.com/

 

As I say, it all kinda made some sense before hirez streaming appeared.

 

Also, this is very OLD info (4 years or so)

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by tripitaka

[Ittaku]

9 hours ago, tripitaka said:

Hang on, found my notes.

You can access the original upload quality (often very good, though not always).

 

Copy the clip URL to keepdownloading.com which gives you a WEBA file which you can convert to FLAC using on online converter like

http://online-audio-converter.com/

 

As I say, it all kinda made some sense before hirez streaming appeared.

 

Also, this is very OLD info (4 years or so)

That converts it to flac. It doesn't start as lossless flac data though. The videos are still lossy AAC or OPUS.

[Ittaku]

9 hours ago, Nada said:

Quote

Youtube uses two types of audio formats – AAC (wrapped in an MP4 container) or Opus in a WebM container. For AAC, Youtube will play a maximum audio bitrate of around 126 kbps. For Opus, it can be between 56 kbps and 165 kbps.

It's worth noting that 128kbps AAC is going to sound better than Opus 164kbps most of the time given its more advanced encoding algorithm, so it's not worth doing somersaults to try and get your video as Opus in WebM uploaded to youtube - if it's a bitrate that Youtube doesn't support, it will just reencode the audio anyway.

[tripitaka]

3 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

That converts it to flac. It doesn't start as lossless flac data though. The videos are still lossy AAC or OPUS.

Fair enough, I don't have a sense what 128kbps AAC should sound like, but I obtained several downloads which I thought sounded pretty good.   Back when I was doing this, the downloader presented the user with options for different audio file sizes. For some music tracks (often described by the poster as HD) those audio files were really vastly different in size - those happened to be the only ones where I could get an excellent download.

 

[aussievintage]

35 minutes ago, tripitaka said:

Fair enough, I don't have a sense what 128kbps AAC should sound like, but I obtained several downloads which I thought sounded pretty good.

 

One of the reasons I asked this question is that I have been listening to some youtube videos where the content is supposed to be audiophile high quality etc etc     It does sound quite good,  so I was curious how youtube are achieving it.  Since it appears they are doing it with 128kbps then that says the AAC algo must be quite good.

[aussievintage]

 

Actually, I am sitting here listening to some "audiophile" content from youtube, played by my phone, by bluetooth to moOde running on my rPi 4, to my humble Topping D10 dac, to my main system -  and it sounds quite good.      Given the double lossy conversion as it plays, and who knows what before that,  it really shouldn't sound as good as it does.

[Ian McP]

13 hours ago, Nada said:

The lossy low bit rate is more then compensated by some wonderful live recording with minimal sound engineering and  some excellent DR possible eg

 

 

indeed!

 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Ian McP

[MLXXX]

3 hours ago, Ittaku said:

It's worth noting that 128kbps AAC is going to sound better than Opus 164kbps most of the time given its more advanced encoding algorithm, so it's not worth doing somersaults to try and get your video as Opus in WebM uploaded to youtube - if it's a bitrate that Youtube doesn't support, it will just reencode the audio anyway.

 

I note that Wikipedia disagrees in relation to the subjective performance of the Opus codec, ranking Opus above AAC:-

 

Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

[Ittaku]

2 minutes ago, MLXXX said:

 

I note that Wikipedia disagrees in relation to the subjective performance of the Opus codec, ranking Opus above AAC:-

 

Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

Interesting, I was not aware of that research, thanks.

[aussievintage]

23 hours ago, Ian McP said:

indeed!

 

Indeed, indeed!     I have spent a day or so listening to Youtube "hifi".   Found this collection (Audiophile Heaven) to be good.    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASjfzS1Pjss-3tCgnO3s5g/videos    for example.

 

I am going to have to judge Youtube sound as being not quite as exciting to listen to as my  vinyl.   Not exactly sure why.  There's a certain sparkle missing from the highs that even effects female vocals. The lower end and deep bass is excellent though.   Has to be because of the low bitrate AAC I suppose.    Not saying it isn't good to listen to though.     

 

 

[Ittaku]

Many of the recordings of other peoples' hifis should ideally only be listened to on headphones though, since the room is in the recording, and we assume they were recorded with stereo mics in approximately binaural positions.