YouTube audio bitrate

QuasiUnaFantasia

Fair enough!

oshogg

CyberGene I'm not arguing whether in real life, being there, listening with my own ears the actual sound, or playing the pianos myself may yield very different preferences.

I have recently played 3 Fazioli F-278 in person. Two were new and one was from 1985. They all had completely different sounds in person to my ears - even the two new ones. I really liked the touch and tone of one - I was told that it was selected by Mr. Fazioli himself for NAAM 2019. That particular F-278 had the best action of any piano I have played - including 2 new Bosendorfer 280VC and 3 new Steinway Ds - all I have played in last few months.

Given this variability, I think it is hard to generalize about piano sounds - even for the same make and model. Each piano really has it's own sound - just like persons.

Osho

arc

YT does not uses constant bit rate but variable bit rate. The same video is also encoded in multiple video and audio formats and bitrates depending on several criteria, including size, number of views, and even the profile of the uploader. Videos encoded originally in lower quality can also be automatically re-encoded to higher quality once they reach a number of views. So, the same video often ends up having audio streams in different bitrates in formats, such as Opus, AAC, MP3. In any case, none of these details are published by YT/google, so the process is not transparent. The details of a video and its audio can only be checked using third party tools. What is known is that the audio variable bitrate tends to top at ~160kbps.

As an example have a look at the formats in which this video is encoded….

arc

oshogg And the sound of the same piano will vary significantly depending on its placement and acoustics of the room… I recently moved my piano across the room and it seems I managed to revoice it without a technician ;-)

burkey

arc What is known is that the audio variable bitrate tends to top at ~160kbps.

The Opus audio is at 160 kbps, however the AAC audio we were discussing is at 126 kbps. I'll check which one the concert was encoded in.

Either way, it's nowhere near as good as 1980s CD audio quality. Even YouTube's premium audio service (256 kbps AAC) is inferior to all the other audio streaming services from Apple, Amazon etc.

If you want to judge - or fully appreciate - audio: don't do it via YouTube.

arc

burkey The Opus audio is at 160 kbps, however the AAC audio we were discussing is at 126 kbps. I'll check which one the concert was encoded in.

Encoding cannot be selected by the YT uploader. Videos that reach a certain number of views or are uploaded by specific users are re-encoded by YT and made available at higher bitrates. This concert should be encoded with audio in Opus VBR@160 Kbps within webm containers and AAC in mp4 containers. The bitrate depends on the YT conditions, which are not publicly defined.

Either way, it's nowhere near as good as 1980s CD audio quality. Even YouTube's premium audio service (256 kbps AAC) is inferior to all the other audio streaming services from Apple, Amazon etc.

We need to be careful with generalizations. YouTube is a video streaming service. So, we cannot compare it with audio-only streaming providers. We can compare YouTube (video) with Vimeo, for example, which delivers high-quality video and audio (320 kbps AAC at constant bit rate).

But it is complicated to compare just the raw numbers because we do not know how the audio is being encoded. YouTube Music uses AAC @ 256 kpbs, Apple Music also uses AAC @ 256 kpbs, Amazon Music MP3 @ 256 kbps, Spotify MP3 up to 320 kbps. But then the details matter. For example, some tracks are encoded with VBR others with CBR. And these formats can use very different profiles that greatly affect sound quality (for example LC-AAC, HE-AAC, HEv2-AAC…). And the audio encoder itself also makes a big difference. For example, the LL-AAC Apple proprietary encoder often delivers less compression artefacts than other LL-AAC encoders at specific bit rates. The point is that the the audio quality is not only a function of the bit rate. The encoding process (which is often ignored) has a major role. The point is that a good audio encoder using a properly configured audio profile at 256 kpbs can easily outperform a basic encoder with a standard profile at 320 kbps…

The main difference between YouTube Music and the competition is the lack of lossless audio. Afaik, only YouTube Music and Spotify do not support lossless formats. But Spotify is now testing a lossless audio service (Spotify HiFi).

Anyway, a significant part of the users of these services does not have the hardware and/or audio equipment to profit from high-quality or lossless audio encoding.

If you want to judge - or fully appreciate - audio: don't do it via YouTube.

Completely agree! And skip the Bluetooth headphones if you really want to judge audio quality ;-)

Jose EB5AGV

I wonder… for me, the sound of the Chopin competition was pretty good. So, was it due to having plenty of viewers or my ears are too easy to please?

MacMacMac

Jose EB5AGV the sound of the Chopin competition was pretty good.

Agreed. I think far too much is made of bit rate. I listen to the performance, not the bits.

arc

Jose EB5AGV I wonder… for me, the sound of the Chopin competition was pretty good. So, was it due to having plenty of viewers or my ears are too easy to please?

Live streams in YT are controlled with the "Live Control Room", which allows defining video and audio encoding parameters. The recommended audio encoding is AAC CBR 128-Kbps stereo. But the "Live Control Room" allows for higher audio bit rates (there are tutorials showing how to live stream on YT that explain the settings). The video is then transcoded on the fly by YT during the live stream. The question is if the audio quality that the viewers with sufficient bandwidth get is close to the original or not…

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