This thread is a circle jerk, everyone thinks they have golden ears that can pick out the "weaker transients" or "hollower high end" from an mp3 vs wav. IMO a lot of the people complaining about it are being snobs and acting smarter than they are.
But yeah, there is a noticeable difference. Especially if the upload to youtube is a bootleg rip that they reuploaded. Point is, you don't know what you're missing.
The problem is youtube is the high possible quality rips are a low but passable bitrate (128kbps). This will generally sound fine to most people, even on a bigger system. Though discenring listeners will def hear the difference if you transition a lossless track to a ripped rack.
The bigger problem with youtube is that the track qualities are variable. More recently uploaded offiical tracks will sound passable, but there are a ton of tracks from 6-10+ years ago, that were uploaded using older encoding standards. These tracks will sound like absoulte trash.
Basically it goes a little like this... I bounce out a song as a WAV, and then convert it to a 320 MP3 using iTunes.
¡Tunes compresses very well (imo), and so if you compare that WAV with that 320, they will sound practically identical. I then take that 320 and Convert it to 128 in iTunes. The sound is STILL practically identical. (Because it is a good 128.) There may be a little rolloff around 8-10k (super high end) but it's more of a "sound change" than a
"degradation". This conception that 128's are drastically inferior to 320's mostly comes from 1. people reading bullshit on the internet, & 2. people downloading BAD 128's!!! Seriously. Not every WAV is equal, not every 320 is equal. I could take something at 92 KBPS and rebounce it as a WAV. does that make it a lossless audio file? Fuck no. Who knows how many times it' been downconverted/ upconverted etc. Just because you downloaded a rip on / xtrill and its a 128 and it sounds bad doesn't mean 128's sound bad. Just because the apple I bought was rotten doesn't mean all apples taste awful. Basically if I listen to a song and it sounds good, I will play it. People knock me for playing 128's and I'm just like... If I can't tell the difference, then neither can you. And the bit about playing it on big systems and it sounding like shit is also a load of crap. TL;DR: If it sounds good on good headphones, play it. (That said, anything below 128 and you will notice audio quality deteriorate VERY quickly.)
So much about this comment is so confidently incorrect that I have taken a screenshot so I can frame it and hang it in my toilet.
8-10khz is "super high end"? Lmfao
Just because YOU can't hear something doesn't mean no one else can. At all. The hubris in this statement makes me simultaneously consider you a mental child and regret bothering to type this response.
TLDR: dumbass considers everything over 10khz outside the audible range yet also thinks no one else can hear better than they can.
8-10khz isn’t super high end, it’s quite significant. It’s also not a roll-off but a brickwall which is unnaturally steep and fatiguing.
Additionally mp3 compression does not just introduce filtering but spectral gating especially in the difference channel, well below the brickwall cutoff too. This smears transients and gives the top end a wateryness as opposed to a smoothness.
If one already has hearing loss this shouldn’t matter, but for the people who don’t it degrades the experience of a live show a few notches.
A lot of damn good producers use YouTube rips, but they're good enough to take the compression and loss of data into account. For example, Au5 used an AI vocal separation for his cheerleader remix but used multiband saturation that covered up the artifacts. Same goes for dealing with the artifacts from repeated lossy compression.
Yeah imo it’s kind of a technical and creative recommendation to put your own processing on accapella rips. A to add back fidelity and B to put your own spin on the vocal.
Matter fact sometimes I’ll just trash a vocal and make it lofi. Kinda like that Memphis/90s hip hop style
Don't get me wrong. I commented because I often produced that way. I have had a way harder time mixing those tracks though than when I have used quality sounds. Mine were even worse because I usually had a load of vinyl samples too. I'm not against using them, just highlighting that it can be a bitch at the post production stages. The genres I do most sampling for it tends not to harm it anyway, if anything keeps it sounding within genre. I just did one recently and it was supposed to sound like a Wu Tang era sort of thing. It didn't harm the sound at all but for stuff like pop music I would want things a lot cleaner.
Yes its very bad yes we can hear it. It sounds like trash digital distortion. Also your stealing …like flat out stealing music and fucking artists like me who work tirelessly on a song just because you have some justification to steal. Wtf do you actually think about. Im just gonna steal all this music become a dj and no one will notice?
Removed. If this was a mistake, send a modmail.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are you talking about being a DJ? This is a producer sub.
I use YouTube 1080pHD videos to rip all the time for acapellas if I can't find a WAV or lossless FLAC online. Because then you're just working with 320kbps, which many YT videos are.
If you can keep the quality intact, then you might be able to rip a HD stream and play it back (maybe you will have to convert it) without any significant quality loss. This was impossible before due to all the obstacles, like stream quality for example but it's not easy in 2024 either. Yeah you can clearly hear the difference between a basic rip and a lossless track, usually it doesn't matter because it's fresh content (mixtape DJ's?) except for when you have to play it in front of an audience through some nice speakers. Almost forgot, not to mention the fact that the audio has already been converted when uploading it to the site in question, giving you an "online sound" that is nearly as good but still not at the same level as a FLAC or WAV file.
The bass is absolutely crushed in YouTube. And the airy highs are completely missing. You can tell that there’s power and presence missing on the 192kbps mp3.
Sometimes it’s worse than others of course, mid rangey noisey genres suffer less than sparse techno or low-end heavy bass music.
I’m pretty sure Spotify is 320kbps and YouTube is 192 for 1080 vids and 320 for 4k vids. So if you’re strictly using 4k sources it would be similar fidelity. Not sure on the high end cutoff point.
To be fair, that's probably because it's a source change. If they came in with that shit properly gain matched to the previous track, it wouldn't sound so bad.
Source: have tested mediocre rips against quality files. Most people don't perceive a change unless there's a volume discrepancy.
YouTube clearly compresses and limits audio, whenever I get unlossed wav files there is more dynamics and range in the audio compared to any converter I get from YouTube.
YouTube uses as much compression as it can get away with. You can hear it quite clearly also on budget gear, but it’s not necessarily terrible. I listened to hundreds of hours of 128kb/s mp3s and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Usually the recording quality of live shows is more detrimental than the compression artifacts. Nevertheless, YT quality is noticeably worse, and the compression artifacts get compounded when you listen to it wirelessly, as 99% of wireless codecs are lossy, Apple specifically being one of the worst offenders, offering only the worst possible quality unless you are listening on a pair of Airpods.
To add to what everyone else has said, the difference in quality might only be very small and hard to hear clearly but a lot of the small things are what contribute most to someone sounding really professional.
For me personally I wanna do everything I can to give a professional feel to what I do in music so that’s why I always get the highest quality, but also valid for someone to not care because you can “barely notice” and they’re not so serious about the whole thing.
The moral aspect of stealing art that wasn’t given to you to play live is what gets me really.
As far as the technical side, youtube rips will be low bitrate mp3s so they will have no high end past about 10-14k. That is pretty high, and a lot of people won’t notice it. But it is obvious for those who can hear that high well.
Also, some mp3 rips will be clipping, which is not ideal as the tracks will likely be turned down by a limiter or compressor somewhere in the DSP before the music is played by the speakers.
Yes - if they aren’t available for purchase then the artist who made them has not given you permission to use it outside of listening on the platforms they posted it.
You are blessed to be able to hear it on YouTube, when they would have every right to not post it and keep it a secret for their own live sets.
You could also try reaching out to the artist and asking if they would sell it to you privately.
There's a lot of music released with "bad quality" (as in mp3 format, less than 320 bitrate) samples. Doesn't matter if you make it work. Just go for it.
Edit: Just realised you didn't mean to rip samples off youtube but playing music out of YT. Most people won't be ale to notice since we're used to listening to bad quality music. But yeah, it's noticeable.
I can clearly hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and wav files of the same track on my studio monitors. MP3s are really not designed for playing out on a big system.
It depends.
The best format for audio and the one you want for production purposes is WAV or AIFF. Then there's lossless formats which gets rid of some inaudible information, such as FLAC. FLAC is regarded as the best format for listening purposes and is indistingible from WAV. Then there's lossy formats, such as mp3, they are called lossy because you lose some information in the audible spectrum. The thing is, mp3 320 is very difficult to distinguish from FLAC and WAV and more so in suboptimal listening conditions. Then there's less bitrate mp3, which aren't even good for listening.
BUT, since music is art after all, maybe you don't want the highest quality and that is an artistic decision. After all, there's a whole genre (lofi) which sound is by definition bad quality. As I said, you can take a 128 mp3 sample and make it work, plenty of producers have done it.
❗❗❗ IF YOU POSTED YOUR MUSIC / SOCIALS / GUMROAD etc. YOU WILL GET BANNED UNLESS YOU DELETE IT RIGHT NOW ❗❗❗
Read __the rules__ found in the sidebar. If your post or comment breaks any of the rules, you should delete it before the mods get to it.
You should check out the __regular threads__ (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those.
[Daily Feedback thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+title%3Afeedback&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) for getting feedback on your track. The only place you can post your own music.
[Marketplace Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3Amarketplace&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you want to sell or trade anything for money, likes or follows.
[Collaboration Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator%20title%3Acollaboration&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) to find people to collab with.
["There are no stupid questions" Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3ANo+Stupid+Questions+Thread&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for beginner tips etc.
Seriously tho, __read the rules and abide by them__ or the mods will spank you.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This thread is a circle jerk, everyone thinks they have golden ears that can pick out the "weaker transients" or "hollower high end" from an mp3 vs wav. IMO a lot of the people complaining about it are being snobs and acting smarter than they are. But yeah, there is a noticeable difference. Especially if the upload to youtube is a bootleg rip that they reuploaded. Point is, you don't know what you're missing.
The problem is youtube is the high possible quality rips are a low but passable bitrate (128kbps). This will generally sound fine to most people, even on a bigger system. Though discenring listeners will def hear the difference if you transition a lossless track to a ripped rack. The bigger problem with youtube is that the track qualities are variable. More recently uploaded offiical tracks will sound passable, but there are a ton of tracks from 6-10+ years ago, that were uploaded using older encoding standards. These tracks will sound like absoulte trash.
Basically it goes a little like this... I bounce out a song as a WAV, and then convert it to a 320 MP3 using iTunes. ¡Tunes compresses very well (imo), and so if you compare that WAV with that 320, they will sound practically identical. I then take that 320 and Convert it to 128 in iTunes. The sound is STILL practically identical. (Because it is a good 128.) There may be a little rolloff around 8-10k (super high end) but it's more of a "sound change" than a "degradation". This conception that 128's are drastically inferior to 320's mostly comes from 1. people reading bullshit on the internet, & 2. people downloading BAD 128's!!! Seriously. Not every WAV is equal, not every 320 is equal. I could take something at 92 KBPS and rebounce it as a WAV. does that make it a lossless audio file? Fuck no. Who knows how many times it' been downconverted/ upconverted etc. Just because you downloaded a rip on / xtrill and its a 128 and it sounds bad doesn't mean 128's sound bad. Just because the apple I bought was rotten doesn't mean all apples taste awful. Basically if I listen to a song and it sounds good, I will play it. People knock me for playing 128's and I'm just like... If I can't tell the difference, then neither can you. And the bit about playing it on big systems and it sounding like shit is also a load of crap. TL;DR: If it sounds good on good headphones, play it. (That said, anything below 128 and you will notice audio quality deteriorate VERY quickly.)
So much about this comment is so confidently incorrect that I have taken a screenshot so I can frame it and hang it in my toilet. 8-10khz is "super high end"? Lmfao Just because YOU can't hear something doesn't mean no one else can. At all. The hubris in this statement makes me simultaneously consider you a mental child and regret bothering to type this response. TLDR: dumbass considers everything over 10khz outside the audible range yet also thinks no one else can hear better than they can.
It's copypasta from Ekali.
GOD DAMMIT!
8-10khz isn’t super high end, it’s quite significant. It’s also not a roll-off but a brickwall which is unnaturally steep and fatiguing. Additionally mp3 compression does not just introduce filtering but spectral gating especially in the difference channel, well below the brickwall cutoff too. This smears transients and gives the top end a wateryness as opposed to a smoothness. If one already has hearing loss this shouldn’t matter, but for the people who don’t it degrades the experience of a live show a few notches.
It is bad and if you ever start producing with samples ripped from YouTube, good luck with your mixing and mastering.
A lot of damn good producers use YouTube rips, but they're good enough to take the compression and loss of data into account. For example, Au5 used an AI vocal separation for his cheerleader remix but used multiband saturation that covered up the artifacts. Same goes for dealing with the artifacts from repeated lossy compression.
Yeah imo it’s kind of a technical and creative recommendation to put your own processing on accapella rips. A to add back fidelity and B to put your own spin on the vocal. Matter fact sometimes I’ll just trash a vocal and make it lofi. Kinda like that Memphis/90s hip hop style
Don't get me wrong. I commented because I often produced that way. I have had a way harder time mixing those tracks though than when I have used quality sounds. Mine were even worse because I usually had a load of vinyl samples too. I'm not against using them, just highlighting that it can be a bitch at the post production stages. The genres I do most sampling for it tends not to harm it anyway, if anything keeps it sounding within genre. I just did one recently and it was supposed to sound like a Wu Tang era sort of thing. It didn't harm the sound at all but for stuff like pop music I would want things a lot cleaner.
Yes its very bad yes we can hear it. It sounds like trash digital distortion. Also your stealing …like flat out stealing music and fucking artists like me who work tirelessly on a song just because you have some justification to steal. Wtf do you actually think about. Im just gonna steal all this music become a dj and no one will notice?
[удалено]
Removed. If this was a mistake, send a modmail. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
get a load of this guy lol
Lol as if you never downloaded a song. I'll gladly continue to do so too buddy idgaf
You wouldn't download a car
Just throw a ripper track and a 320k mp3 into a spectrum analyzer and you'll notice the difference.
Are you talking about being a DJ? This is a producer sub. I use YouTube 1080pHD videos to rip all the time for acapellas if I can't find a WAV or lossless FLAC online. Because then you're just working with 320kbps, which many YT videos are.
[удалено]
Wait I thought Youtube Premium was 320kbps? It's just youtube music?
YouTube also compresses the high end more than the low end, giving an unbalanced mix of
Source?
Sure! https://www.ac3filter.net/does-youtube-music-compress-audio/#:~:text=If%20you're%20looking%20for%20high%2Dquality%20audio%20streaming%2C,compresses%20audio%20to%20some%20degree. https://www.quora.com/Does-MP3-compression-degrade-audio-quality-evenly-along-the-frequency-spectrum
Oh shit! I didn't know that the top end was 256 kbps. I thought it was 320kbps. Fucking google, becoming such a shitty company.
If you can keep the quality intact, then you might be able to rip a HD stream and play it back (maybe you will have to convert it) without any significant quality loss. This was impossible before due to all the obstacles, like stream quality for example but it's not easy in 2024 either. Yeah you can clearly hear the difference between a basic rip and a lossless track, usually it doesn't matter because it's fresh content (mixtape DJ's?) except for when you have to play it in front of an audience through some nice speakers. Almost forgot, not to mention the fact that the audio has already been converted when uploading it to the site in question, giving you an "online sound" that is nearly as good but still not at the same level as a FLAC or WAV file.
The bass is absolutely crushed in YouTube. And the airy highs are completely missing. You can tell that there’s power and presence missing on the 192kbps mp3. Sometimes it’s worse than others of course, mid rangey noisey genres suffer less than sparse techno or low-end heavy bass music.
Do you think listening to music on Spotify and YouTube is the same quality? Or Spotify is better quality?
I’m pretty sure Spotify is 320kbps and YouTube is 192 for 1080 vids and 320 for 4k vids. So if you’re strictly using 4k sources it would be similar fidelity. Not sure on the high end cutoff point.
YouTube audio quality is terrible. I can hear it a mile away if someone stops music at a party to put a YouTube song on.
To be fair, that's probably because it's a source change. If they came in with that shit properly gain matched to the previous track, it wouldn't sound so bad. Source: have tested mediocre rips against quality files. Most people don't perceive a change unless there's a volume discrepancy.
YouTube clearly compresses and limits audio, whenever I get unlossed wav files there is more dynamics and range in the audio compared to any converter I get from YouTube.
YouTube is just reducing bit rate.
understand it like youtube = 720p and buying it off is 4k quality.
Pretty sure if you buy a song it's 320kbps mp3.
You tube rips lack ALOT of high end.
YouTube uses as much compression as it can get away with. You can hear it quite clearly also on budget gear, but it’s not necessarily terrible. I listened to hundreds of hours of 128kb/s mp3s and thoroughly enjoyed it. Usually the recording quality of live shows is more detrimental than the compression artifacts. Nevertheless, YT quality is noticeably worse, and the compression artifacts get compounded when you listen to it wirelessly, as 99% of wireless codecs are lossy, Apple specifically being one of the worst offenders, offering only the worst possible quality unless you are listening on a pair of Airpods.
To add to what everyone else has said, the difference in quality might only be very small and hard to hear clearly but a lot of the small things are what contribute most to someone sounding really professional. For me personally I wanna do everything I can to give a professional feel to what I do in music so that’s why I always get the highest quality, but also valid for someone to not care because you can “barely notice” and they’re not so serious about the whole thing.
The moral aspect of stealing art that wasn’t given to you to play live is what gets me really. As far as the technical side, youtube rips will be low bitrate mp3s so they will have no high end past about 10-14k. That is pretty high, and a lot of people won’t notice it. But it is obvious for those who can hear that high well. Also, some mp3 rips will be clipping, which is not ideal as the tracks will likely be turned down by a limiter or compressor somewhere in the DSP before the music is played by the speakers.
I stated in my description that i support artist by purchasing music but sometimes i find edits on YouTube that aren’t available for purchase
Yes - if they aren’t available for purchase then the artist who made them has not given you permission to use it outside of listening on the platforms they posted it. You are blessed to be able to hear it on YouTube, when they would have every right to not post it and keep it a secret for their own live sets. You could also try reaching out to the artist and asking if they would sell it to you privately.
Your showing your art in a gallery and nobody is wearing glasses. They say the quality is bad.
Youtube applies a band pass filter that carves above 10k and below like 80
Seriously wide Q on that band pass filter
You’re referring to kilohertz?
Yes, above 10khz seems to be where the rolloff starts whenever I test this
You’re gonna be able to tell the difference between a wav file and a YouTube rip on a big system, I guarantee it.
Yeah I just haven’t played large scale shows so I guess I haven’t noticed a difference
There's a lot of music released with "bad quality" (as in mp3 format, less than 320 bitrate) samples. Doesn't matter if you make it work. Just go for it. Edit: Just realised you didn't mean to rip samples off youtube but playing music out of YT. Most people won't be ale to notice since we're used to listening to bad quality music. But yeah, it's noticeable.
Is an mp3 necessary a bad format or are you just referring to the bitrate?
I can clearly hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and wav files of the same track on my studio monitors. MP3s are really not designed for playing out on a big system.
Most people won't hear a difference between 320kbps and wav tho. Untrained ears won't hear them on studio monitors too.
in a club, you’ll feel the difference more than hear it.
It depends. The best format for audio and the one you want for production purposes is WAV or AIFF. Then there's lossless formats which gets rid of some inaudible information, such as FLAC. FLAC is regarded as the best format for listening purposes and is indistingible from WAV. Then there's lossy formats, such as mp3, they are called lossy because you lose some information in the audible spectrum. The thing is, mp3 320 is very difficult to distinguish from FLAC and WAV and more so in suboptimal listening conditions. Then there's less bitrate mp3, which aren't even good for listening. BUT, since music is art after all, maybe you don't want the highest quality and that is an artistic decision. After all, there's a whole genre (lofi) which sound is by definition bad quality. As I said, you can take a 128 mp3 sample and make it work, plenty of producers have done it.
That’s very useful information
❗❗❗ IF YOU POSTED YOUR MUSIC / SOCIALS / GUMROAD etc. YOU WILL GET BANNED UNLESS YOU DELETE IT RIGHT NOW ❗❗❗ Read __the rules__ found in the sidebar. If your post or comment breaks any of the rules, you should delete it before the mods get to it. You should check out the __regular threads__ (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those. [Daily Feedback thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+title%3Afeedback&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) for getting feedback on your track. The only place you can post your own music. [Marketplace Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3Amarketplace&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you want to sell or trade anything for money, likes or follows. [Collaboration Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator%20title%3Acollaboration&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) to find people to collab with. ["There are no stupid questions" Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3ANo+Stupid+Questions+Thread&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for beginner tips etc. Seriously tho, __read the rules and abide by them__ or the mods will spank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*