Whats with all these Audiophile YouTube Playlists?

[tmtomh]

YouTube is fantastic for auditioning music you're curious about, and in my experience it usually can provide some sense of the basic production and mastering style of a recording. But for "audiophile" purposes - discerning differences between differnet codecs, bit depths, and sample rates - it's completely and utterly useless. It's all lossy and it's simply nonsense that if you upload, say 24/96 audio to YouTube the result will sound better than if you upload a 16/44.1 version of the same thing. Putting aside for the moment the likelihood that no one can hear the difference between those two originals, the YouTube lossy compression will obliterate any sonic difference that might exist.

And that's putting aside that a good number of folks who comment on how awesome these "audiophile" YouTube videos sound are listening on computer speakers and have never bothered to do even a sighted comparison with "non-audiophile" versions of the same music, let alone a blind comparison.

Mostly what the commenters are saying, whether they know it or not is, "That sounds like well-recorded, well-mastered music."

 

[diablodan]

YouTube is fantastic for auditioning music you're curious about, and in my experience it usually can provide some sense of the basic production and mastering style of a recording. But for "audiophile" purposes - discerning differences between differnet codecs, bit depths, and sample rates - it's completely and utterly useless. It's all lossy and it's simply nonsense that if you upload, say 24/96 audio to YouTube the result will sound better than if you upload a 16/44.1 version of the same thing. Putting aside for the moment the likelihood that no one can hear the difference between those two originals, the YouTube lossy compression will obliterate any sonic difference that might exist.

And that's putting aside that a good number of folks who comment on how awesome these "audiophile" YouTube videos sound are listening on computer speakers and have never bothered to do even a sighted comparison with "non-audiophile" versions of the same music, let alone a blind comparison.

Mostly what the commenters are saying, whether they know it or not is, "That sounds like well-recorded, well-mastered music."

I have been scouring YouTube looking for new things to listen to. I don't have an "audiophile" set up by any means but I do enjoy "well-recorded, well-mastered music" and your comments have captured exactly what I have discovered. There is a lot of great music to listen to on YouTube even if it isn't lossless or using the highest possible quality lossy compression. I think many people who have labeled their videos as "HD" or "HQ" or "Audiophile" either don't know any better (the terms aren't really standardized or trademarked, are they?) or they know better but are just trying to get eyeballs and/or revenue from something they're selling. I'm happy to search for these "audiophile" videos and listen to them on my powered monitors hooked up analog/3.5mm to the built in Realtek "High Definition Audio Device" (Microsoft and/or Realtek, also guilty of dubious claims to be HD) in my Dell running Windows. It's not phenomenal but I really enjoy listening to the music rather than worrying about DACs and tubes vs. solid state etc. In other words, I'm not really an audiophile, I'm just a music lover looking for something that sounds good and makes my work day more enjoyable and YouTube sure is a great resource for finding new things to listen to.

 

[tmtomh]

I have been scouring YouTube looking for new things to listen to. I don't have an "audiophile" set up by any means but I do enjoy "well-recorded, well-mastered music" and your comments have captured exactly what I have discovered. There is a lot of great music to listen to on YouTube even if it isn't lossless or using the highest possible quality lossy compression. I think many people who have labeled their videos as "HD" or "HQ" or "Audiophile" either don't know any better (the terms aren't really standardized or trademarked, are they?) or they know better but are just trying to get eyeballs and/or revenue from something they're selling. I'm happy to search for these "audiophile" videos and listen to them on my powered monitors hooked up analog/3.5mm to the built in Realtek "High Definition Audio Device" (Microsoft and/or Realtek, also guilty of dubious claims to be HD) in my Dell running Windows. It's not phenomenal but I really enjoy listening to the music rather than worrying about DACs and tubes vs. solid state etc. In other words, I'm not really an audiophile, I'm just a music lover looking for something that sounds good and makes my work day more enjoyable and YouTube sure is a great resource for finding new things to listen to.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Yes, I agree with you 100% about the "HD/HQ" labels on YouTube - no standardization and certainly meaningless from an "audiophile" perspective. On the positive side, my guess is that the "HQ" label in particular means the uploader has chosen the highest-quality audio setting YouTube allows for uploading - so at least they have minimized the looseness of the YT compression as much as possible. For example, there are a number of older music clips up on YouTube that use truly crappy bitrates, like 96kbps. The "HQ" label usually means it's at the 128k/256k YouTube max. 128k AAC isn't necessarily audibly transparent, but it's certainly good enough that the essential character of the original digital source will still come through.

 

[Webninja]

Anyone know if Apple Music videos are the same quality as their audio only streams?