YouTube uses Opus 160kbps which is decent enough. YouTube also allows uploading videos with lossless audio.
So it’s more about what happens with the audio before it gets to YouTube. Someone uploads a video clip with 128kbps AAC, YouTube re-encodes it to Opus160, someone downloads it as 160kbps MP3, makes a lyrics video and whatever tool they used makes it into 96kbps Vorbis, it gets put on YouTube, Opus160 again, you download it as whatever bitrate MP3 again and it sounds like shit.
Just an example, there may be way more lossy re-encode generations going on.
It’s more about the generations rather than YouTube.
I dunno’, I hear a distinct difference between any YouTube video and the CD, even ones posted by the artists or labels directly.
Though I do not pay for YouTube premium and never will, so maybe it’s better if you pay the beast.
Either way, fuck the beast. … and not in a good way.
yea, it’s also just up to 160
using grayjay to download wham:last christmas gives us up to 134kbps opus. which is fine, it’s the official channel and all, so upload is pretty good.
Just talking, is more like 118kbps, a gresham lecture came in at that.
Opus is variable, which is pretty good. saves bandwith and all.
also to point out, youtube reencodes a lot of videos, so the older it is - the more likely it has been re-encoded. and youtube is not encoding from an old master file.
Point is, totally agree on the generational thing, which you (mostly) avoids with spotify.
it’s good enough for most audio setups if you find the decent audio on youtube first
