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Ask HN: Repulsive music quality in streaming video?

4 points by countWSS ↗ HN
From the mid-2023(perhaps earlier) the quality of music on youtube has started to evoke some sort of visceral disgust and i've gradually stopped listening to it. Is it format changes? Did they started to compress it in another way? It is some browser-induced latency glitch(Firefox exclusive here)? For the reference, both FLAC/mp3 and even streaming from soundcloud don't have the same visceral effect.

8 comments

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ungreased0675
I’ve noticed the same thing, don’t have any theories on why.
r721
Perhaps it would be useful to look at which exact codecs YouTube chooses for your configuration.

(on desktop) Right click in the video area - "Stats for nerds" - "Codecs" (I'm not sure but I think this could be video dependent, not universal)

countWSS
Codecs for 720p vp09.00.51.08.01.01.01.01.00 (247) / opus (251) Codecs for 1080p vp09.00.51.08.01.01.01.01.00 (248) / opus (251)
r721
>opus (251)

Looks like standard audio codec, so it's probably not the source of the problem. Other theories:

1) Volume normalization algo bug? ("Volume / Normalized" in "Stats for nerds")

2) Buffer-related issues? (watch "Buffer Health" line in "Stats for nerds" while video plays)

3) Dropped frames? (watch "Viewport / Frames" line in "Stats for nerds" while video plays)

Anyway I'm not an expert in this topic, just speculating.

countWSS
No dropped frame,consistent 60s+ buffer,volume at any setting doesn't affect it. I'm suspecting its the Linux audio stack interfering with something in youtube player, something relatively recent that perhaps expects pipewire(i have pulseaudio).
brudgers
A/B listen to Youtube on Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android.

My experience with Linux audio was typical, i.e. poor at times.

brudgers
Other possibilities:

1. Changes to hearing.

2. Changes to listening environment.

Changes to hearing comes to mind because I first experienced the need for eyeglasses as "something wrong with the cable TV signal".

countWSS
Soundcloud works just fine, FLAC/MP3 streaming, midi files. The problem seems to be isolated to Youtube, its not really about quality of files - something makes the music feel bad but not like first 3-5 min of listening, it appears after 20-30mins.