YouTube just put the final nail in the Loudness War’s coffin

[SixStringGeek]

http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/

YouTube have been using loudness normalisation on their music videos – and they’ve been doing it since December last year. Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed.

I think this is probably a good thing.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

It is unless your music doesn't sound so good when people actually listen to it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BKK-OZ]

Another thing to hate about YouTube.

From autoplay, to the way that videos automatically get queued up, to the ads, the fugly interface...
bleh, I hate it all.

That's why I use Vimeo.
Not perfect, but much better.

[stubbsonic]

Another thing to hate about YouTube.

From autoplay, to the way that videos automatically get queued up, to the ads, the fugly interface...
bleh, I hate it all.

That's why I use Vimeo.
Not perfect, but much better.

not to mention it keeping track of what you "like". I'm with you!

yea, vimeo is way classier!

[monkey man]

The auto-queue thing is annoying for me; I have to conduct new searches to find out what the heck I was watching if, say, I want to download or re-watch it.

The trick, of course, is to stop / pause before the clip reaches its end. Still a PITA 'though.

[stubbsonic]

The auto-cue thing is almost as bad as the ads. If the whole idea is to choose what you watch, Google continues to get more and more pushy. It's like a super-needy false-friend that keeps trying to guess what you like. "I baked you brownies!" Yea, thanks, but I don't want brownies. "RIGHT!, Here are some kisses®!" Um. I'm not really in the mood for... "It's just that yesterday you had some chocolate, so I wanted to make sure you had chocolate..." Yea, um, could you just, you know, give me a little space?

[mikehalloran]

http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/

YouTube have been using loudness normalisation on their music videos – and they’ve been doing it since December last year. Everything plays at a similar loudness, regardless of how it was mastered. And no-one has noticed.

The author has links to many of his other articles. All promise that he'll teach you how to deal with it -- if you give him your name and email. Uh... right... I'll pass on that.

The information is out there from many other sources. Besides, it's not like you can't upload your work to YouTube to check your mixes.

So, breaking news: YouTube levels all tracks. More breaking news: they've been doing it for awhile. Headline news: nobody noticed. Oh really?

Radio and TV have been doing it for a long time.

[stubbsonic]

The information is out there from many other sources. Besides, it's not like you can't upload your work to YouTube to check your mixes.

So, breaking news: YouTube levels all tracks. More breaking news: they've been doing it for awhile. Headline news: nobody noticed. Oh really?

Radio and TV have been doing it for a long time.

Well, I think this is a little different. With radio & TV, it was hard or brick-wall limiting, and everything was equally loud-assed, but dynamic range was reduced. It sounds like this does have the possibility that with YouTube, that a mix that has dynamics won't have to compete as unfavorably with mixes that don't.

I'm just talking philosophically. If YouTube is just using some kind of way of calibrating the overall level of something without f'ing up the relative dynamics, that's not necessarily a bad thing. If this is achieved with limiting, then it is obviously quite a different thing.

[monkey man]

PooToob would argue that peak "equalisation" doesn't account for dynamic-range variation between clips, meaning that the "user experience" could still be a bumpy ride.

I've been saying for a very long time that uniformitarianism is an addiction of the modern age; it has affected our outlook on the world, history and indeed (this one's the most frustrating for yours truly) science.

[stubbsonic]

If this is just peak normalization, then perhaps it is a necessary evil.

Inexperienced folks often post video, but don't know how to set levels correctly. Videos with unnecessarily low levels might be fairly common. For people "consuming" media in a series, they might jack the level of one quiet video, only to have their ass handed to them by the next slammin' video in the series.

For inexperienced media creators, YouTube could provide an option to either normalize their level (by default) or preserve original volume level.

This way, if I REALLY want my video to be quiet, for example say it is a video of a quiet scene, and I just want a very low level ambience and nothing more, I'd be able to do that. As it is now, I'd have to "trick" YT somehow with either a hidden peak (out of audible frequency range) or some other method. Or I'd have to tell the viewer, "turn down your volume"

As for this being an example of uniformitarianism, I can see your point. And it is different from "standardization". In this example, YT really is changing the end user experience.

For me what is far more egregious is the way, with YouTube, FaceBook, and Google, the gateways to our minds are bought and sold with our reluctant but tacet consent. The abrupt disappearance of the concept of Selling Out is also troubling, as is the absence of our fear of a single gatekeeper.

[billf]

For me what is far more egregious is the way, with YouTube, FaceBook, and Google, the gateways to our minds are bought and sold with our reluctant but tacet consent.

This is not a comprehensive list, but there are alternatives to the big three.

For example Diaspora is an open source Facebook alternative. Commercial alternatives are sites like Plurk.

Search engines: DuckDuckGo and StartPage are alternatives to Google (as are Bing and Yahoo).

Video: Vimeo, DailyMotion, Zippcast

[daniel.sneed]

[...]It's like a super-needy false-friend that keeps trying to guess what you like. "I baked you brownies!" Yea, thanks, but I don't want brownies. "RIGHT!, Here are some kisses®!" Um. I'm not really in the mood for... "It's just that yesterday you had some chocolate, so I wanted to make sure you had chocolate..." Yea, um, could you just, you know, give me a little space?

+1. Thanks, Stubbsonic, for the good time reading.

[monkey man]

If this is just peak normalization, then perhaps it is a necessary evil.

The cynic in me doubts it is, Stubbsy.

For inexperienced media creators, YouTube could provide an option to either normalize their level (by default) or preserve original volume level.

This'd be cool IMHO, but PooToob wouldn't want to place this judgement call in the hands of we mere mortals, would it?

As for this being an example of uniformitarianism, I can see your point. And it is different from "standardization". In this example, YT really is changing the end user experience.

I like the way you think.

For me what is far more egregious is the way, with YouTube, FaceBook, and Google, the gateways to our minds are bought and sold with our reluctant but tacet consent. The abrupt disappearance of the concept of Selling Out is also troubling, as is the absence of our fear of a single gatekeeper.

Amen, brother.