Very interesting. Thanks for this. Made a release a few weeks ago and now wonder if going back and forth between a Google Drive file listening to see if the mastering was cool or not was making me chase ghosts sometimes. Will now figure out some other way to listen in other place. Thanks for the tip!!
Their web frontend would be using something like ffmpeg to transcode it for stream previews in the browser. It does not make sense to push the entire wave file through as a stream. The actual issue is if the cloud storage provider is compressing the uploaded files and then when downloaded if there is any loss then you should not use those services for audio production where any quality loss is not allowed. Same goes for graphics files and any kind of graphic design works.
Yep! I understand why it wouldn't make sense for them to stream the files at full quality, really this is just a PSA to always download files if your want to listen critically, rather than playing them in your browser. Also felt like a good use case for a null test, and to demonstrate how those work
yeah, figured they were compressing my tracks too since I've noticed Google Drive/Photos limits higher res videos to 1080p with lower bitrates on the web player; gotta find me a way to make my backups more accessible than having to download the files every time I want to watch/listen. great video! 👍
Yeah this is where it really falls flat. I keep almost all of my audio on my computer as well as in my Dropbox, so the issue is only when I'm sending files to my clients and I have to warn them not to listen in the browser and to download the file. When I had a much smaller sdd I used to use Dropbox for online only storage, so was having to constantly download files to hear them in full quality, which became a real pain!
There is a bit of an issue with this process. The browser plugin has volume controls, and then you are normalizing. Unless both are using the same exact algorithm and the same values, you are not going to get perfect results. (not overly sure you would even then) You have essentially run the audio through two digital gains.
I hear where you're coming from but the differences in the gain process will be minute, and I would argue almost imperceptible to the human ear. Definitely would not explain the differences we hear in these null tests. The information in the highs that you hear in the result is absolutely typical of what I'd expect to hear from compression artifacts. I agree that the test isn't perfect, but I'm happy that it still proves beyond doubt that there's compression on playback from these platforms
I've never used that platform, but I would guess that they also compress audio and video when streaming it, so my advice would be the same - you're almost certainly better off downloading the files and playing them offline in a media player or in your DAW
What if you send them .RAR file? Oh wait, do you mean just don't play them on their players on the website? You're not saying that just compress the file and change it are you? So you can't even send one that way???
The issue is only if you play the files back from in the Dropbox app or in a browser. If you send someone a link to a file on one of these platforms and they download it to their computer/mobile device then it will be full size, full quality and you won't have any issues
it adds weird artifacts and changes the perceived pressure on my tracks. So glad you made this video. Thank you. I got stuck in mixing hell because of these platforms.
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Kinda clickbait. Ofc the browser streaming is compressed. But the files are not compressed when uploading to dropbox.
Very interesting. Thanks for this. Made a release a few weeks ago and now wonder if going back and forth between a Google Drive file listening to see if the mastering was cool or not was making me chase ghosts sometimes. Will now figure out some other way to listen in other place. Thanks for the tip!!
Their web frontend would be using something like ffmpeg to transcode it for stream previews in the browser. It does not make sense to push the entire wave file through as a stream. The actual issue is if the cloud storage provider is compressing the uploaded files and then when downloaded if there is any loss then you should not use those services for audio production where any quality loss is not allowed. Same goes for graphics files and any kind of graphic design works.
Yep! I understand why it wouldn't make sense for them to stream the files at full quality, really this is just a PSA to always download files if your want to listen critically, rather than playing them in your browser. Also felt like a good use case for a null test, and to demonstrate how those work
yeah, figured they were compressing my tracks too since I've noticed Google Drive/Photos limits higher res videos to 1080p with lower bitrates on the web player; gotta find me a way to make my backups more accessible than having to download the files every time I want to watch/listen. great video! 👍
Yeah this is where it really falls flat. I keep almost all of my audio on my computer as well as in my Dropbox, so the issue is only when I'm sending files to my clients and I have to warn them not to listen in the browser and to download the file.
When I had a much smaller sdd I used to use Dropbox for online only storage, so was having to constantly download files to hear them in full quality, which became a real pain!
Good observation!!
Thank-you for sharing!
There is a bit of an issue with this process. The browser plugin has volume controls, and then you are normalizing. Unless both are using the same exact algorithm and the same values, you are not going to get perfect results. (not overly sure you would even then)
You have essentially run the audio through two digital gains.
I hear where you're coming from but the differences in the gain process will be minute, and I would argue almost imperceptible to the human ear. Definitely would not explain the differences we hear in these null tests. The information in the highs that you hear in the result is absolutely typical of what I'd expect to hear from compression artifacts.
I agree that the test isn't perfect, but I'm happy that it still proves beyond doubt that there's compression on playback from these platforms
what about onedrive?
I've never used that platform, but I would guess that they also compress audio and video when streaming it, so my advice would be the same - you're almost certainly better off downloading the files and playing them offline in a media player or in your DAW
What if you send them .RAR file? Oh wait, do you mean just don't play them on their players on the website? You're not saying that just compress the file and change it are you? So you can't even send one that way???
The issue is only if you play the files back from in the Dropbox app or in a browser. If you send someone a link to a file on one of these platforms and they download it to their computer/mobile device then it will be full size, full quality and you won't have any issues
I ran into this same issue with Dropbox. I kept chasing weird noises, but as soon as I downloaded the file, all the noise left.
it adds weird artifacts and changes the perceived pressure on my tracks. So glad you made this video. Thank you. I got stuck in mixing hell because of these platforms.