Everywhere I’ve looked YouTube only plays back at 165kbps in 1080p video or higher. I asked in the comments of one of these playlists and they replied YouTube can playback FLAC, HD, Highres what ever you want to call it. I just highly doubt this and I think all these people making these “Audiophile” music channels and playlists are cons.
What do you think?
I mean youtube audio only goes up to like 128kbps aac max, so you aint going to get any “audiophile” sound here lol. It’s just people uploading well recorded music, but that quality doesn’t transfer over through youtube. I think youtube music though if you pay can go up to 256 acc. Either way it’s sure not lossless and def not ideal lol. It might help you discover some music that you like to then go buy lossless somewhere lol
If you are creating content for youtube it is still a good idea to upload lossless audio because youtube will compress that, so if you feed it a mp3 that will be compressed even further.
I think it is at least good to give an idea of what the music is, or an easy free way to see the what the song is.
I always link YouTube because almost everyone has access to it, whereas streaming services may or may not play that exact song if you don’t pay.
I noticed some of these playlists claim 32bit/384k or 24bit/192k which is rediculous. I noticed many of these little $100 DACs coming out support 24/192 and 32/384 so I started looking for a place to get this highres music and mostly YouTube music playlists came up.
So they may have uploaded that quality of file (pretty unlikely), but it won’t really matter
I mean they still are “Audiophile paylists on YouTube”. Only that the quality is not.
Maybe a “song list” would be more proper?
I know if you go 1080p the audio is worse than on 480p as they cut some audio quality for bandwidth if that makes sence.
Either way, the audio on YouTube maxes out at 120kbps. So it is far from ‘audiophile’.
Even the ‘audiophile’ playlists on YouTube are a bit iffy seeing as Spotify maxes out at 320kbps.
CD, FLAC and WAV are much higher than this, and are pretty much the only ‘audiophile’ ways to properly listen to music, if it matters to you that much.
Once it hits a certain point, there is no real difference unless you are listening to a very high end setup, there are very few people that can truly utilise this.
Streaming services like Soon, Tidal or Qobuz are the way forward in my opinion, unless you want to rip CDs to FLAC or whatever.
It also matters very much the mastering of the tracks, this you can still here a difference with, even when streaming low quality songs.
Felix
Idk, like everyone has said, there’s a whole YouTube Compression thing so yeah, it’ll essentially be highly compressed vs anything else, even regular MP3 rips of a CD or something (I think it’s usually 192kbps, someone correct me though, and at best 320kbps, with AAC being slightly higher).
Idk any difference is really minor usually, although idk, YouTube stuff sounds weird vs regular 320 MP3 ripped from a CD or a Digital File, Probably placebo tho, can’t put my finger on it but it’s just weird.
Like I can’t really hear a difference between a 192 MP3 vs 16 Bit FLAC, or even 24 Bit FLAC for that matter, if the mastering is the same unless I AB it for a bit, and again, probably Placebo at that point since it takes a while, probably my brain making up excuses to find a difference, but idk, YT is just . . . weird for me, almost in the moment something feels, weird . . ., maybe it’s too compressed or they do something weird when they compress it, or maybe having an MP3 upload compressed by another algorithm, idk, although take this with a grain of salt.
As long as the mastering and mixing is well done, usually that’s the more important of alot of factors, if a recording is going to sound good or not. Take the David Bowie vs the Iggy Pop mixes of Raw Power, One is an echoey mess and the other is a slightly less echoey mess, still love the album tho, both versions too I guess, but still, the Iggy version sounds a bit better to me, no matter the file format. I really don’t think listening to the Bowie mix in 24/192 WAV vs the Iggy mix in 192kbps MP3 is going to help anything.
I agree. I’ve been commenting on all these playlists debunking them because there are many comments that lead me to believe most people listening to these playlist are actually experiencing “audiophile” quality music. This has nothing to do with the actual music, I enjoy many of these playlists but as Ive began looking into digital audio I realized they are pretty much click bait for the the uneducated audio enthusiast. I think this further perpetuates a lot of confussion and lies in the community. So I’m not trying to be a dick to these YouTube channels weather they’re innocent or not, I just want people to know what they are getting.
youtube playlists are great for background music. “audiophile” music is still typical better recorded music. So like others have said, it is a great way to discover music. and well if you have windows as your dac for instance, like 70% of americans(maybe more), you wouldn’t know the difference anyways. I think they serve a great point in the over all audio experience. But any real lossless source will be better for critical listening.
Unless your using logitech speakers, then once again it will not matter =)
I look at them as modern radio. Radio sounds good enough but never will beat a real format.
edit: and you get groovey videos =)