Thank you for pointing out!! I shut mine off. Unfortunately, since that option is up to the user and not the channel owner, our content will not be received as intended by everyone. That sucks.
Thanks very much for this Ian. I did not know about the YT change. Stable Volume was enabled when I first played your video. I COULD STILL hear the dynamic range in your example video, but when I disabled it, the range was greater. I can see and appreciate why YT introduced this feature. It's a good idea, but yes, you are right, a more obvious disable feature or default-off is needed.
This is a serious problem for any TH-camrs who serve our audio profession. I played this video and used my spl meter and, even though it is obvious to a blind man, there was roughly a 6db difference between the first and second examples. This is a huge difference and could effectively negate any benefits from audio videos. Thanks for this information.
@@checktheneckNo way to add it to older videos though, and pretty tedious to have to mention it every time (and for people to have to hear it every time), especially if they end up letting us opt-out or change the feature in future.
@@checktheneckThat's not really a good way to handle this. The default with TH-cam is it should be off. Thanks to this video I'm now aware and was shocked and annoyed to find all my playback devices have this now enabled. My apple TVs. My normal smart TV, my game console that can play TH-cam. The list of devices in my household that now needs to be checked. As a content creator I don't want to be disturbing my audience about this feature on any future videos I upload. Down the road if they remove it then we have videos talking about and warning viewers about a features that gone. This needs defaulting off by TH-cam. Or a setting for us to flag it off during upload so our audience is not affected. Funny enough I was noticing audio was lower on some videos recently just thought content creator had got a new mic or something. Didn't think it would be TH-cam forcing stupid features on us.
I really appreciate the heads up on this Ian. I had no idea TH-cam had implemented this variety of DRC. This will have an impact on not only those of us who upload content about audio production and mastering, but anyone who wants the dynamics in their work to be maintained. I'm fine with loudness normalisation, and am grateful for TH-cam and other streaming services implementing it, but I don't want my music to be massacred by a cheap compressor. I put a lot of effort into my albums, from initial recording, through to mixing and mastering, to maintain dynamic range and audio quality.
Well the good news is that it shouldn’t be applied to music, but you’re right that there are many other types of content where the dynamics are important and carefully determined by the creators 😕
I suppose the compression is relatively simple because it is probably applied client-side. I hope YT will add controls for creators to disable this by default on their channel and allow for changing the default on a per-video basis. I have some taking head videos that I don't mind to be treated this way, but I generally do control the volume rather well on my own, and in videos where I teach sound design etc or test limiters... having this forced on for everyone watching is... suboptimal at best.
Stable volume was set to auto for this video on my TV but there was still a large difference with your example. Turning it off certainly made a difference but the dynamics was still similar. Thanks for the video would never have even seen it.
Ian, this is unbelievable. I have a channel that compares original albums with their remastered/remixed counterparts at the exact same LOUDNESS. It's imperative that YT doesn't compress anymore than they already do in order to let viewers hear the differences. I only have 5k subs, but I'm going to post this video on my community page. I'm also going to tweet YT directly on twitter. Thank you!
HELM, thanks for sharing the link for us to FIND this MAN! This exactly pertains to ur content and will need to educate disclaimer to shut it off before playing or something for awhile maybe? I shut it off and glad to know when they add new weird stuff here and there!
I had stable volume turned on and I could hear the difference in the video, it's similar to how radio and TV broadcast sounds with limiting. thanks for bringing awareness to this setting.
@@XtremeKremaTor That’s a common complaint, but in my testing the ads are also normalised to -14. TH-cam doesn’t turn quieter material up though (without Stable Volume) so I think this happens when people crank up a quiet video (eg. anything at broadcast level, which is -23) and then the ads sound super-loud in comparison even though they’re “only” @ -14
@@ProductionAdvice Most videos on youtube, except for music videos, are way below -14. Even if the producer knows what their doing, a podcast or video with just speech won't necessarily sound the best at -14. I often end up 3 dB quieter when I just compress speech content by ear. But a lot of video producers don't know much about audio and their content will be at -20. A professionally produced commercial at -14 will then sound super loud.
@ Fair comment - my podcast is also around -18. It’s a shame YT doesn’t use -16 for its Distribution Loudness as recommended by the AES - that would be a step in the right direction at least
Yep, I'm on desktop (and HD which I'm told improves sound quality) and stable volume was indeed on ... switched off now. Thank you, Ian! Just watched The Crow Hill company video explaining dynamic range in orchestration and orchestral plug-ins, and of course this stable volume was switched on while he was demonstrating it.
@@SR1B Right. I’ve known about it for a while and have been hoping they would turn it off by default or allow us to reject it for our channels, but no luck 😕 Honestly when I first found out about it I was really relieved it didn’t apply to most music and disabled it - it never occurred to me that it would be affecting people watching my videos 🤦♂️
Wow! Thanks for finding this. What a difference! (It was "on" when I started watching your video. Kali UNF-LP monitors on my crappy work laptop via BT). Unless this can be set in the video at publishing, it looks like we're back to "master for the media" or adding pads and other noise to the production to mask dynamics changes, and we're back to the loudness wars.
@@SilentKnightProductions I don’t think it’s that bad - remember this isn’t meant to be applied to music. I’m also hopeful they will allow us to get some control, hopefully sooner than later 🤞
Thanks Ian. Completely missed that. That means that the best way would be for all content creators to have a little intro „Please Disable Equal Loudness Feature“- followed by a short 10sec instructions video
@@saardean4481 I’ve thought about it ! But there’s no way to go back and add this to old videos, plus if TH-cam do as I’m asking and allow us to opt out those intros will be redundant… tedious !
Thanks for that heads up, yesterday (or when was it uploaded) I watched a video VWestlife made about MiniDisc, at the end he added a clip recorded from the device of a dynamic range test disc, and it really felt like I've heard that test before on 1/4" tape and it felt MUCH wider... I wondered what was going on, if it was just the ATRAC on MiniDisc screwing it up, or what happened... Now I understand what was that effect.
Thanks Ian - I had no idea about this one. You are correct in that it makes a BIG DIFFERENCE on this end when selected. Super helpful info, as per usual from your content.
Really useful - thank you. I have set Stable Volume off, on your advice. I had heard videos sounding differently recently and this was it. Appreciated ! Maybe there are expanded setting that can undo Stable Volume and videos mastered with these settings would by-pass it (?).
Great info thanks. I guess there is one silver lining for us and that is it will be harder for plugin developers that use the louder sounds better trick on their TH-cam videos.
Thanks for informing us ! Another popular sound engineer on TH-cam that I follow also talked about this. Obviously I disabled it but without videos like yours and the other one, I would have never seen this option !
Funny, I didnt see the "stable volume" switch until you showed it in the video. So I listented to your "good" example with it ON. I could still hear a drastic volume difference. Then you played the "bad" examples and every example song sounded very much equal volume to each other. As if the 2 instances of the algorithm in series (mine and yours in the demo) totally flattened things out. Glad this video showed up in my recommended. Too bad the uploader cannot tell TH-cam to disable it and simply normalize the entire audio track in one chunk to TH-cams LUFS ideal.
The solution for TH-cam seems quite simple. Allow channel owners to select a “disengage stable audio” option so that it doesn’t apply to their content. I’m sure once they hear about the issue they’ve created, they will do something to that effect.
Hi Ian, new to your channel. I did not know about this setting and I could hear a clear difference when I turned it off, it explains why I have trouble with back to back comparisons lol. A lot of what I watch on TH-cam is about recording music, so having it off should enhance listening to this type of content. As I am in the process of learning how to record my own Guitar based Music I look forward to using your channel as a reference. Cheers Pete
Thank you for making me aware of this, I had not yet noticed this new feature. If I understood you correctly, the TH-cam compressor even changes the volume in real time during a piece of music, for example? That would destroy the macrodynamics just like on the radio...
It does, but not (intentionally) for music videos. These are supposed to be excluded. But for videos that have both speech and music, yes it does exactly what you’re saying 😕
'Stable volume' is terrible and sometimes sound strange. Even if you disable it, sometimes it turns on again itself or youtube sets volume of the video to 50%. It's so frustrating.
I thought that this would just toggle the "loudness penalty" normalization to -14 LUFS, so I left it turned on, as normalizing is a good thing. Never thought that this is actually compression, thank you very much for sharing, I disabled it now!
The only thing “wrong” or “the Fix’ is to default to off instead of on. I feel that the bulk of users are benefited by having it on and people like us would think to disable it, so I honestly don’t think they “ruined” anything becasue we can disable it. Maybe making it highlighted somehow so more users know about the toggle would be great, but it would be even better if producers could tag their videos to turn it off. Maybe just a disclaimer before each of your videos to turn it off would be sufficient?
Interesting. This feature would certainly help with "talking head" type videos where from channel to channel there are big differences between audio volume. My audio interface broke and I was using just powered speakers plugged into on-board audio to listen to various history and news podcasts and it was annoying trying to get the volumes at the level I wanted without the convenience of a volume knob. But yeah, pretty much messes up critical listening examples.
Ok cool, I hadn't noticed it yet. I can see the point of it for certain videos, like compilations of fail videos or dashcam crashes or wild police badcam videos with sirens and people shouting, those random recordings of noisy crap can be annoying to have the mass fluctuations, but for music I want full dynamic range, thank you very MUCH! \m/
Hey Ian, I’m not sure how the DRC works on desktop, but I can confirm that the loudness differences you pointed out in the 2:10-2:40 section are still present, even with "stable volume" enabled. However, in the second section (3:12-3:44), they’ve clearly been compensated through some kind of DRC. Whether I enable or disable "stable volume" on my end, the loudness differences remain where they’re supposed to, but they’re smoothed out in the second section. This suggests that whatever DRC TH-cam is applying seems to happen on your end rather than on the listener’s end. This doesn’t make much sense to me, as it effectively renders the "stable volume" feature useless for the listener, but it’s what I’m observing here (Windows PC - TH-cam in Google Chrome).
Sorry to bud in here. I am sure someone will have an elaborate explanation... but... If the audio is printed with the drc issues in, then the compressor won't activate again as the volume has already been adjusted.
@@Gw49172 I suspect there are two audio streams, one with & one without (see the way the video image switches off and on when you change the setting) In terms of this video the effect is likely to be more complicated though, since I’m incorporating audio with Stable Volume On into a new video with different material around it, and different overall loudness. So enabling it on *this* video will probably sound different again
im toggling it right now and it totally changes the dynamics of his voice (which is higher in dynamic range), it is quite clear and not subtle. I have found on some videos stable volume doesn't do much or doesnt seem to be working, but when it is working it isn't subtle especially on production videos.
@@JimijaymesProductions That’s really puzzling... Could you share your configuration (device, browser)? I just recorded the first 90 seconds of audio from this video, first with smart volume enabled and then with it disabled. I can confirm that there’s no change in dynamics whatsoever on my end. The only difference is in the overall loudness. Here are the measurements I got for this 90-second section: Smart volume enabled: -19.4 LUFS integrated / 3.9 LRA / -2 TPmax Smart volume disabled: -21.6 LUFS integrated / 3.9 LRA / -4.4 TPmax I’m really curious to understand why the system behaves differently on your end compared to mine. Any thoughts on that, Ian?
@ I am just using Opera GX, I haven't done measurements and I am not sure about macro dynamics but definitely micro dynamics, Ive heard it mostly on videos where there is talking and music based audio, sounds like a multiband limiter has been strapped on the end. Give me a sec to do some measurements/recording and ill let you know, but to my ears its not subtle, the noisefloor comes up and the tail of consonants (especially in the low end) is louder but the transients aren't and when there is two audio sources, the quieter one gets louder.
Interesting. I’ll be turning it on and off for different channels. Curiously, I was still able to hear the dynamic differences in your examples pretty clearly even with it on. I’m an audio tech who does a lot of dialogue work so maybe I’m extra sensitive to level differences. 🤷♂️
Agreed! And thanks for pointing this out. But on the other hand, I have to say honestly, that some videos really benefit from this setting. They are so poorly balanced, that the comprssion ought to be even stronger! Good to know, that I can now - at least temporarely - dis/enabling this setting. Unconvenient, but better like this, rather than getting an audio sauce.
This also demonstrates well how the last pop song is so utterly crushed and devoid of dynamics regardless of the settings. I hope that we don't need to disable this manually for every video. You would think that they would have at least given us global control over such a sweeping setting.
TH-cam should stop doing stuff in the background that most people don't want. For example they also auto-translate English video titles to the language set in your browser. Not sure which videos they target, this video still has its original English title.
Its funny, for years people complained about YoutTube audio compression which never actually existed until now, they've made the complaints real. At least it's able to be turned off.
The feature that should always have been provided, on radios (especially car-radios) as well as players or even operating systems, _But with an obvious switch_ (or, even, a degree-of slider?).
thanks I've turned it off as I do watch a fair few videos on compressors etc. Even on "normal" videos, like news or TV clips it's making a big difference. With it on it seems alot louder and maybe shriller. It really should be an option when you create a video, but I can see my own music videos it's turned off even when it is on for other videos. Maybe that's because all my videos I allocated to the music category.
Ta, what we don't need is yet more compression in audio. Didn't know this was a thing in addition to whatever TH-cam has been doing to audio for yonks.
The irony is they haven't been doing much that affected the quality (bar the streaming codec) until recently. This is quite a big deal for some content, though.
Hmm… another important thing to keep in mind. If you’re not watching the video through their app on the phone (iphone at least), you can’t turn off the DRC feature. So if you’re on FB for example, and you just click the video without opening the YT app, the feature stays on. There’s no gear icon for settings displayed.
A data point for you: on this video, I checked - and Stable Volume was off already. Do you think it remembers my choice from other videos? Seems unlikely... However, also, I loaded a different video (from a science channel) and it was not only OFF but also disabled so I couldn't turn it on. There's more to this than meets the eye...
@@macronencer Thanks - in my testing when I turn it off it stays off for all videos, so I assume the setting is cookied per-browser, not per-video. And yes, Stable Volume is sometimes greyed out, but I’m not sure how the decision is made - music videos are the most obvious example, but the detection isn’t perfect - I’ve seen at least one music video, tagged as music, already mastered to -14, which still had SV as an option. So there’s a grey area in all this of “intent versus execution”
@@ProductionAdvice Thanks Ian - yes, I guess it must be remembering my choices. Interesting about the greying out thing, because the science video I tested it on was mostly talking, but there's a long outro with music... maybe it picked up on that?
I am already frastrated for long time about the fact that all TH-cam videos on PC play with significantly lower volume than they actually uploaded with.
That’s just loudness normalisation, which is a simple gain change because people find it annoying to be blasted by loud videos. I understand you might not like it but I actually think it’s a good thing. Stable Volume is different though 😕
Ya, I soon as I saw Stable Volume I immediately shut it off haha! In our world it does not help. Love your videos Ian but if I'm being honest I can't watch them often. I have Misophonia and mouth clicks drive me INSANE! Please treat them when editing your videos if you wouldn't mind. I'd be a loyal subriber and watch every video if you did! I have mouth clicks when I record myself too so no shade or anything. Not criticizing! You can't help it but you can treat it. I'd love if you did!
@@ProductionAdvice It's cool man and like I said, it's nothing you are doing wrong. I'm just more sensitive to that kind of stuff. I'm autistic and it's something a lot of autistic people deal with. I use iZotope RX Mouth DeClick and it always does the job! It lives on my vocal buss as the first plugin lol.
It help a lot tho when noobs don't know about volume control, and the mic have super low volume. I can barley hear them even if I have TH-cam volume is at max
Unfortunately, the slider won't allow you to turn it off on mobile. At least that's my experience. So since I am not hearing the difference that you are intending to show, I do have a question about your video: the level meters all seem to be hitting the same peak on the right side and on the left there was a different plotted graph; are you trying to say that these meters are inaccurate? What was the point of the original video, that levels that look the same on a vu meter will have different loudness level perception? A this video is a discussion about a discussion while talking about technical problems (which I'm a victim of and couldn't solve in the way described), it's kind of hard to follow precisely... lol Still, thanks for letting me know about this TH-cam issue.
Strange that you can’t disable it, are you on iOS or Android ? And is the app up to date ? The original video is demonstrating normal loudness normalisation, you can see it here if you’re interested th-cam.com/video/BPComa5yH9w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=KNfVbnTH3VtES0Tr The point of the graph is to show that there is a big difference in level between those examples, but that Stable Volume reduces them. The graph shows that (lower peaks and higher lows on the right) but you can’t (currently) hear it. Sorry if that wasn’t clear…
Haha. I got all the way through your examples then noticed it has appeared on my settings. I could still hear the difference. Switched it off. Much more difference. For me it must have been added very recently as I would have noticed it (desktop btw). Could be useful for listening to some of those lazy youtubers' who are not so good at balancing their audios from different sources. More edit - I'm confused now after a bit of a look around. Not all vids on a channel have it? Some of mine do and some of them don't for example.
I only found out about this an hour before finding your video Good idea for “soft” videos: people who don’t understand what LUFS are but a very bad idea for the rest of us. I always master to -13 or -12.5 with -1 true peak and don’t mind being turned down 1/2 dB and sometimes not a t all. That’s fine for music but as you pointed out, a very bad idea for educational content
I suggest that perhaps you should add a short 10 seconds or so instruction at the beginning of each of your videos reminding or explaining the need to do it before the video continues.
@@DonBernhard Maybe, but there’s no way to go back and add this to old videos, plus if TH-cam do as I’m asking and allow us to opt out those intros will be redundant… tedious !
Here's the joke: google adsense recommends creators master their content to -14 lufs. Now they automatically normalize by 6 db? Why not have us master to -8 lufs?!!!
Fair question - but if they did that, this feature would have to be even more aggressive, and sound worse as a result. Remember this doesn’t change the playback level of -14, the idea is just to makes varied content more consistently close to that reference. Which is a good thing for some videos with really huge changes in level - but not so good for videos like this, classical music, ASMR etc
The trouble is presumably it improves the views (because content with extremely dynamic material will be easier to listen to) which in their eyes is a good thing 😕
Thank you for pointing out!! I shut mine off. Unfortunately, since that option is up to the user and not the channel owner, our content will not be received as intended by everyone. That sucks.
OH wow, that sounds way better. I didn't realize Stable Volume was on, or how heavy the compression was.
Thanks very much for this Ian. I did not know about the YT change. Stable Volume was enabled when I first played your video. I COULD STILL hear the dynamic range in your example video, but when I disabled it, the range was greater. I can see and appreciate why YT introduced this feature. It's a good idea, but yes, you are right, a more obvious disable feature or default-off is needed.
I switched it off on mobile ages ago, but check the setting again every once in a while.
Today, it was back on again... :(
This is a serious problem for any TH-camrs who serve our audio profession. I played this video and used my spl meter and, even though it is obvious to a blind man, there was roughly a 6db difference between the first and second examples. This is a huge difference and could effectively negate any benefits from audio videos. Thanks for this information.
As a youtuber you can warn about this feature in your video and it won't be a problem
@@checktheneckNo way to add it to older videos though, and pretty tedious to have to mention it every time (and for people to have to hear it every time), especially if they end up letting us opt-out or change the feature in future.
@@checktheneckThat's not really a good way to handle this. The default with TH-cam is it should be off. Thanks to this video I'm now aware and was shocked and annoyed to find all my playback devices have this now enabled. My apple TVs. My normal smart TV, my game console that can play TH-cam. The list of devices in my household that now needs to be checked. As a content creator I don't want to be disturbing my audience about this feature on any future videos I upload. Down the road if they remove it then we have videos talking about and warning viewers about a features that gone.
This needs defaulting off by TH-cam. Or a setting for us to flag it off during upload so our audience is not affected.
Funny enough I was noticing audio was lower on some videos recently just thought content creator had got a new mic or something. Didn't think it would be TH-cam forcing stupid features on us.
I really appreciate the heads up on this Ian. I had no idea TH-cam had implemented this variety of DRC. This will have an impact on not only those of us who upload content about audio production and mastering, but anyone who wants the dynamics in their work to be maintained.
I'm fine with loudness normalisation, and am grateful for TH-cam and other streaming services implementing it, but I don't want my music to be massacred by a cheap compressor. I put a lot of effort into my albums, from initial recording, through to mixing and mastering, to maintain dynamic range and audio quality.
Well the good news is that it shouldn’t be applied to music, but you’re right that there are many other types of content where the dynamics are important and carefully determined by the creators 😕
I suppose the compression is relatively simple because it is probably applied client-side.
I hope YT will add controls for creators to disable this by default on their channel and allow for changing the default on a per-video basis. I have some taking head videos that I don't mind to be treated this way, but I generally do control the volume rather well on my own, and in videos where I teach sound design etc or test limiters... having this forced on for everyone watching is... suboptimal at best.
Yeah, exactly 😕
Huge difference, SPOT ON! Mine has been set globally to OFF. Thank you for your diligent attention to real life audio details.
Pleasure !
Stable volume was set to auto for this video on my TV but there was still a large difference with your example. Turning it off certainly made a difference but the dynamics was still similar. Thanks for the video would never have even seen it.
Ian, this is unbelievable. I have a channel that compares original albums with their remastered/remixed counterparts at the exact same LOUDNESS. It's imperative that YT doesn't compress anymore than they already do in order to let viewers hear the differences. I only have 5k subs, but I'm going to post this video on my community page. I'm also going to tweet YT directly on twitter. Thank you!
Pleasure - I agree, of course !
HELM, thanks for sharing the link for us to FIND this MAN! This exactly pertains to ur content and will need to educate disclaimer to shut it off before playing or something for awhile maybe?
I shut it off and glad to know when they add new weird stuff here and there!
That explains it! I was so frustrated by this for the past couple of months, but I never thought to check if there was a setting.
Glad it’s helpful 🙂
I had stable volume turned on and I could hear the difference in the video, it's similar to how radio and TV broadcast sounds with limiting. thanks for bringing awareness to this setting.
They should sort out super LOUD adverts
@@XtremeKremaTor That’s a common complaint, but in my testing the ads are also normalised to -14.
TH-cam doesn’t turn quieter material up though (without Stable Volume) so I think this happens when people crank up a quiet video (eg. anything at broadcast level, which is -23) and then the ads sound super-loud in comparison even though they’re “only” @ -14
uBl*ck Orig*n.
@@ProductionAdvice If I ever hear an ad I mute the volume loud or not and move onto another tab
@@ProductionAdvice Most videos on youtube, except for music videos, are way below -14. Even if the producer knows what their doing, a podcast or video with just speech won't necessarily sound the best at -14.
I often end up 3 dB quieter when I just compress speech content by ear. But a lot of video producers don't know much about audio and their content will be at -20.
A professionally produced commercial at -14 will then sound super loud.
@ Fair comment - my podcast is also around -18. It’s a shame YT doesn’t use -16 for its Distribution Loudness as recommended by the AES - that would be a step in the right direction at least
Yep, I'm on desktop (and HD which I'm told improves sound quality) and stable volume was indeed on ... switched off now. Thank you, Ian! Just watched The Crow Hill company video explaining dynamic range in orchestration and orchestral plug-ins, and of course this stable volume was switched on while he was demonstrating it.
It’s not been added recently; it’s been there for quite a while, but nobody noticed because Google did not inform us.
@@SR1B Right. I’ve known about it for a while and have been hoping they would turn it off by default or allow us to reject it for our channels, but no luck 😕
Honestly when I first found out about it I was really relieved it didn’t apply to most music and disabled it - it never occurred to me that it would be affecting people watching my videos 🤦♂️
@@ProductionAdvice Better late than never! 🙂 Maybe you should now add a note on your previous and future videos about that setting. Tedious but…
@@SR1B That’s the trouble, there’s no easy way to do that 😕 I can put a note in the description, but very few people read them…
@@ProductionAdvice Maybe edit the thumbnails. And the titles. Tedious, but...
@ Sorry, life’s too short - I’m just going to show this video to as many people as I possibly can 😛
Wow! Thanks for finding this. What a difference! (It was "on" when I started watching your video. Kali UNF-LP monitors on my crappy work laptop via BT). Unless this can be set in the video at publishing, it looks like we're back to "master for the media" or adding pads and other noise to the production to mask dynamics changes, and we're back to the loudness wars.
@@SilentKnightProductions I don’t think it’s that bad - remember this isn’t meant to be applied to music. I’m also hopeful they will allow us to get some control, hopefully sooner than later 🤞
Thanks Ian. Completely missed that. That means that the best way would be for all content creators to have a little intro „Please Disable Equal Loudness Feature“- followed by a short 10sec instructions video
@@saardean4481 I’ve thought about it ! But there’s no way to go back and add this to old videos, plus if TH-cam do as I’m asking and allow us to opt out those intros will be redundant… tedious !
Before or after they tell you to Hit Subscribe and Notifications?
Thanks for the advice! Now I'll have to pass it on to my friends when I send them music recommendations.
Thanks for that heads up, yesterday (or when was it uploaded) I watched a video VWestlife made about MiniDisc, at the end he added a clip recorded from the device of a dynamic range test disc, and it really felt like I've heard that test before on 1/4" tape and it felt MUCH wider... I wondered what was going on, if it was just the ATRAC on MiniDisc screwing it up, or what happened... Now I understand what was that effect.
Thanks Ian - I had no idea about this one. You are correct in that it makes a BIG DIFFERENCE on this end when selected. Super helpful info, as per usual from your content.
Really useful - thank you. I have set Stable Volume off, on your advice. I had heard videos sounding differently recently and this was it. Appreciated ! Maybe there are expanded setting that can undo Stable Volume and videos mastered with these settings would by-pass it (?).
Great info thanks. I guess there is one silver lining for us and that is it will be harder for plugin developers that use the louder sounds better trick on their TH-cam videos.
Thanks for informing us ! Another popular sound engineer on TH-cam that I follow also talked about this. Obviously I disabled it but without videos like yours and the other one, I would have never seen this option !
I googled this, and your video came up. Thanks for the information. And I agree, we as creators should be able to turn this off by default.
Funny, I didnt see the "stable volume" switch until you showed it in the video. So I listented to your "good" example with it ON. I could still hear a drastic volume difference.
Then you played the "bad" examples and every example song sounded very much equal volume to each other. As if the 2 instances of the algorithm in series (mine and yours in the demo) totally flattened things out.
Glad this video showed up in my recommended. Too bad the uploader cannot tell TH-cam to disable it and simply normalize the entire audio track in one chunk to TH-cams LUFS ideal.
The solution for TH-cam seems quite simple. Allow channel owners to select a “disengage stable audio” option so that it doesn’t apply to their content. I’m sure once they hear about the issue they’ve created, they will do something to that effect.
Hi Ian, new to your channel.
I did not know about this setting and I could hear a clear difference when I turned it off, it explains why I have trouble with back to back comparisons lol.
A lot of what I watch on TH-cam is about recording music, so having it off should enhance listening to this type of content.
As I am in the process of learning how to record my own Guitar based Music I look forward to using your channel as a reference.
Cheers
Pete
Thanks Pete, glad I could shed some light !
Thank you for bringing this up, I wasn‘t aware of that. Highly appreciated!
My pleasure !
Thank you for making me aware of this, I had not yet noticed this new feature. If I understood you correctly, the TH-cam compressor even changes the volume in real time during a piece of music, for example? That would destroy the macrodynamics just like on the radio...
It does, but not (intentionally) for music videos. These are supposed to be excluded. But for videos that have both speech and music, yes it does exactly what you’re saying 😕
Didn't realize the stable was on!!!!!
'Stable volume' is terrible and sometimes sound strange. Even if you disable it, sometimes it turns on again itself or youtube sets volume of the video to 50%. It's so frustrating.
Very useful information, particularly for musicians watching gear demos and comparing sounds. Thanks
I thought that this would just toggle the "loudness penalty" normalization to -14 LUFS, so I left it turned on, as normalizing is a good thing. Never thought that this is actually compression, thank you very much for sharing, I disabled it now!
Right - the normalisation still applies either way. Stable Volume will make things more consistent but at the price of extra artefacts
They should allow you to turn it off for your whole channel, but youtube doesn't care about the problems they cause...
I think they do care, but their approach has always been “make a mess, then fix it… eventually”
@ProductionAdvice Well, I hope they fix it then...
@@baddriversofcolga Same !
The only thing “wrong” or “the Fix’ is to default to off instead of on. I feel that the bulk of users are benefited by having it on and people like us would think to disable it, so I honestly don’t think they “ruined” anything becasue we can disable it. Maybe making it highlighted somehow so more users know about the toggle would be great, but it would be even better if producers could tag their videos to turn it off. Maybe just a disclaimer before each of your videos to turn it off would be sufficient?
Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
Pleasure !
I can confirm this was also on in Mexico on Android, iPad & Desktop. Thx Ian! And it has to disabled on each device separately.
Thanks for letting us know !
thanks! what is ambient mode?!
As soon as I saw that option appear I turned it off, but I knew what it was doing.
I can certainly hear the difference. It's a big difference to me what I can hear God bless
Any info on the audio resolution increase for the youtube paid version?
stable audio, it's better disabled.
Interesting. This feature would certainly help with "talking head" type videos where from channel to channel there are big differences between audio volume. My audio interface broke and I was using just powered speakers plugged into on-board audio to listen to various history and news podcasts and it was annoying trying to get the volumes at the level I wanted without the convenience of a volume knob.
But yeah, pretty much messes up critical listening examples.
The AGC algorithm they picked is also very aggressive
Thanks for this! I was sure I'd disabled any auto dynamic stuff, but evidently not. Hope YT remembers the setting across videos?
It seems to
Ok cool, I hadn't noticed it yet. I can see the point of it for certain videos, like compilations of fail videos or dashcam crashes or wild police badcam videos with sirens and people shouting, those random recordings of noisy crap can be annoying to have the mass fluctuations, but for music I want full dynamic range, thank you very MUCH! \m/
@@THRASHMETALFUNRIFFS Exactly…
Thanks for information Ian, turning this off makes all the difference for me.
Hey Ian,
I’m not sure how the DRC works on desktop, but I can confirm that the loudness differences you pointed out in the 2:10-2:40 section are still present, even with "stable volume" enabled. However, in the second section (3:12-3:44), they’ve clearly been compensated through some kind of DRC.
Whether I enable or disable "stable volume" on my end, the loudness differences remain where they’re supposed to, but they’re smoothed out in the second section. This suggests that whatever DRC TH-cam is applying seems to happen on your end rather than on the listener’s end.
This doesn’t make much sense to me, as it effectively renders the "stable volume" feature useless for the listener, but it’s what I’m observing here (Windows PC - TH-cam in Google Chrome).
Sorry to bud in here. I am sure someone will have an elaborate explanation... but...
If the audio is printed with the drc issues in, then the compressor won't activate again as the volume has already been adjusted.
@@Gw49172 I suspect there are two audio streams, one with & one without (see the way the video image switches off and on when you change the setting)
In terms of this video the effect is likely to be more complicated though, since I’m incorporating audio with Stable Volume On into a new video with different material around it, and different overall loudness. So enabling it on *this* video will probably sound different again
im toggling it right now and it totally changes the dynamics of his voice (which is higher in dynamic range), it is quite clear and not subtle. I have found on some videos stable volume doesn't do much or doesnt seem to be working, but when it is working it isn't subtle especially on production videos.
@@JimijaymesProductions That’s really puzzling... Could you share your configuration (device, browser)? I just recorded the first 90 seconds of audio from this video, first with smart volume enabled and then with it disabled. I can confirm that there’s no change in dynamics whatsoever on my end. The only difference is in the overall loudness.
Here are the measurements I got for this 90-second section:
Smart volume enabled: -19.4 LUFS integrated / 3.9 LRA / -2 TPmax
Smart volume disabled: -21.6 LUFS integrated / 3.9 LRA / -4.4 TPmax
I’m really curious to understand why the system behaves differently on your end compared to mine. Any thoughts on that, Ian?
@ I am just using Opera GX, I haven't done measurements and I am not sure about macro dynamics but definitely micro dynamics, Ive heard it mostly on videos where there is talking and music based audio, sounds like a multiband limiter has been strapped on the end. Give me a sec to do some measurements/recording and ill let you know, but to my ears its not subtle, the noisefloor comes up and the tail of consonants (especially in the low end) is louder but the transients aren't and when there is two audio sources, the quieter one gets louder.
Hi Ian. I can find but not disable it on an iPad; any suggestions? Thanks
You mean it won’t switch off ? I haven’t seen that. Is the app up to date ?
Interesting. I’ll be turning it on and off for different channels. Curiously, I was still able to hear the dynamic differences in your examples pretty clearly even with it on. I’m an audio tech who does a lot of dialogue work so maybe I’m extra sensitive to level differences. 🤷♂️
Oh, some differences are still audible, for sure - they're just reduced and have extra artefacts (pumping, breathing, distortion on some material)
Thanks Ian ..It was new to me .
Agreed! And thanks for pointing this out.
But on the other hand, I have to say honestly, that some videos really benefit from this setting. They are so poorly balanced, that the comprssion ought to be even stronger!
Good to know, that I can now - at least temporarely - dis/enabling this setting. Unconvenient, but better like this, rather than getting an audio sauce.
Absolutely, that's why I think it's a reasonable idea - but experienced creators should have the option to opt out, IMO
Switched it off!
Thanks, I had not spotted that setting yet.
This also demonstrates well how the last pop song is so utterly crushed and devoid of dynamics regardless of the settings. I hope that we don't need to disable this manually for every video. You would think that they would have at least given us global control over such a sweeping setting.
@@TK-yu2pv I’m pretty sure the browser remembers the setting, so you only need to decide once 👍
@@ProductionAdvice Thanks Ian.
It seems like once you turn it off, it stays off. At least for that one browser, maybe for your account (not sure).
TH-cam should stop doing stuff in the background that most people don't want. For example they also auto-translate English video titles to the language set in your browser. Not sure which videos they target, this video still has its original English title.
Its funny, for years people complained about YoutTube audio compression which never actually existed until now, they've made the complaints real. At least it's able to be turned off.
Exactly... 😕
The feature that should always have been provided, on radios (especially car-radios) as well as players or even operating systems, _But with an obvious switch_ (or, even, a degree-of slider?).
Today the feature shows in the main list and not in a sub menu for me, so maybe they fixed it that fast?
On mobile ?
@@ProductionAdvice I don't know about that. I was talking about PC. I missed that distinction.
@@daved9665 Yeah PC it’s in the first menu which is one good thing at least 👍
Thanks Ian. Will help to spread the word.
Thanks Bob !
Thank you dearly for the heads up!
thanks I've turned it off as I do watch a fair few videos on compressors etc. Even on "normal" videos, like news or TV clips it's making a big difference. With it on it seems alot louder and maybe shriller. It really should be an option when you create a video, but I can see my own music videos it's turned off even when it is on for other videos. Maybe that's because all my videos I allocated to the music category.
Thank's for the heads-up!
Ta, what we don't need is yet more compression in audio. Didn't know this was a thing in addition to whatever TH-cam has been doing to audio for yonks.
The irony is they haven't been doing much that affected the quality (bar the streaming codec) until recently. This is quite a big deal for some content, though.
Hmm… another important thing to keep in mind. If you’re not watching the video through their app on the phone (iphone at least), you can’t turn off the DRC feature. So if you’re on FB for example, and you just click the video without opening the YT app, the feature stays on. There’s no gear icon for settings displayed.
@@ovonisamja8024 Interesting, I hadn’t tried that
Thanks for bringing that up!!
Thanks for the heads up!
Thanks Ian, very much appreciated.
I need this to be Default OFF. Is there a way? This is so horrible.
If you disable it it should stay off in that browser or app 👍
A data point for you: on this video, I checked - and Stable Volume was off already. Do you think it remembers my choice from other videos? Seems unlikely... However, also, I loaded a different video (from a science channel) and it was not only OFF but also disabled so I couldn't turn it on. There's more to this than meets the eye...
@@macronencer Thanks - in my testing when I turn it off it stays off for all videos, so I assume the setting is cookied per-browser, not per-video.
And yes, Stable Volume is sometimes greyed out, but I’m not sure how the decision is made - music videos are the most obvious example, but the detection isn’t perfect - I’ve seen at least one music video, tagged as music, already mastered to -14, which still had SV as an option.
So there’s a grey area in all this of “intent versus execution”
@@ProductionAdvice Thanks Ian - yes, I guess it must be remembering my choices. Interesting about the greying out thing, because the science video I tested it on was mostly talking, but there's a long outro with music... maybe it picked up on that?
Thanks for the heads up.
Hi, When deactivate "Stable Volume" your video sounds low now, while other, with very good audio recording, sounds loud and clear
Interesting, I don’t hear a big change in level here. How are you listening ? Mobile or desktop ?
I am already frastrated for long time about the fact that all TH-cam videos on PC play with significantly lower volume than they actually uploaded with.
That’s just loudness normalisation, which is a simple gain change because people find it annoying to be blasted by loud videos. I understand you might not like it but I actually think it’s a good thing.
Stable Volume is different though 😕
I didn't know about this until your video. However, mine was already set to off.
Superb, well explained video. Thank you so much for pointing this out.
@@StubertStudios Pleasure, glad it was useful !
@@ProductionAdvice I shared your link on HSC as well
Ya, I soon as I saw Stable Volume I immediately shut it off haha! In our world it does not help. Love your videos Ian but if I'm being honest I can't watch them often. I have Misophonia and mouth clicks drive me INSANE! Please treat them when editing your videos if you wouldn't mind. I'd be a loyal subriber and watch every video if you did! I have mouth clicks when I record myself too so no shade or anything. Not criticizing! You can't help it but you can treat it. I'd love if you did!
Sorry to hear that, I didn't know about Misophonia. I'll have a think about whether there's a way to improve this efficiently...
@@ProductionAdvice It's cool man and like I said, it's nothing you are doing wrong. I'm just more sensitive to that kind of stuff. I'm autistic and it's something a lot of autistic people deal with. I use iZotope RX Mouth DeClick and it always does the job! It lives on my vocal buss as the first plugin lol.
It help a lot tho when noobs don't know about volume control, and the mic have super low volume.
I can barley hear them even if I have TH-cam volume is at max
@@StenIsaksson Sure, and that’s why I think it’s generally a reasonable idea - but there should be an opt-out for non-noobs 🙂
Wow, great info. Thanks!
Huge difference !
On my mobile device, it refuses to disable stable audio at all.
Do you mean it's greyed out, or that it doesn't work ?
@ProductionAdvice it's now greyed out. A couple of weeks ago I could turn it off but it immediately flicked back on again.
@@nikolaki Weird 😥 Is that on Android or iOS ? And is your app up to date ?
damn and I thought my ears are getting worse while listening to A/B on tutorials
@@amig012 😂 Exactly !!
I see Tricky, I like.
Well-spotted ! Yeah, I loved working on that, he’s amazing.
Unfortunately, the slider won't allow you to turn it off on mobile. At least that's my experience. So since I am not hearing the difference that you are intending to show, I do have a question about your video: the level meters all seem to be hitting the same peak on the right side and on the left there was a different plotted graph; are you trying to say that these meters are inaccurate? What was the point of the original video, that levels that look the same on a vu meter will have different loudness level perception? A this video is a discussion about a discussion while talking about technical problems (which I'm a victim of and couldn't solve in the way described), it's kind of hard to follow precisely... lol Still, thanks for letting me know about this TH-cam issue.
Strange that you can’t disable it, are you on iOS or Android ? And is the app up to date ?
The original video is demonstrating normal loudness normalisation, you can see it here if you’re interested th-cam.com/video/BPComa5yH9w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=KNfVbnTH3VtES0Tr
The point of the graph is to show that there is a big difference in level between those examples, but that Stable Volume reduces them. The graph shows that (lower peaks and higher lows on the right) but you can’t (currently) hear it. Sorry if that wasn’t clear…
Wow!! great observation!!
Just turned mine off. Thanks for explaining what that feature does!
Well, remember it shouldn’t be applied to music-only videos. It’s videos that have a mix of content that are most likely to be affected
Perhaps that's something that @TH-cam could put in as an option when uploading videos.
@@BassBusMusic Something like that would be a good option, I think
Haha. I got all the way through your examples then noticed it has appeared on my settings. I could still hear the difference. Switched it off. Much more difference. For me it must have been added very recently as I would have noticed it (desktop btw). Could be useful for listening to some of those lazy youtubers' who are not so good at balancing their audios from different sources. More edit - I'm confused now after a bit of a look around. Not all vids on a channel have it? Some of mine do and some of them don't for example.
Sidenote: The switch remains off when i switch accounts.
Yeah I think it's a browser cookie. Pretty sure it doesn't follow you across devices though
if you sign in to youtube, once you set it off, that becomes the default. seems to be my experience
Yeah but most people don’t even know about it, which is why I made this video
Thank you, Ian. I've turned it off. God bless!
I only found out about this an hour before finding your video
Good idea for “soft” videos: people who don’t understand what LUFS are but a very bad idea for the rest of us. I always master to -13 or -12.5 with -1 true peak and don’t mind being turned down 1/2 dB and sometimes not a t all. That’s fine for music but as you pointed out, a very bad idea for educational content
In this binaural music video, the stable volume option is ghosted out: th-cam.com/video/itLxXeyM2aM/w-d-xo.html
Yeah it’s not intended to be used on music videos
@@ProductionAdvice Too bad there's not an option to disable it for you.
Thanks! Didn't know this!
I suggest that perhaps you should add a short 10 seconds or so instruction at the beginning of each of your videos reminding or explaining the need to do it before the video continues.
@@DonBernhard Maybe, but there’s no way to go back and add this to old videos, plus if TH-cam do as I’m asking and allow us to opt out those intros will be redundant… tedious !
It won't let me turn it off
Do you mean it’s greyed-out, or disabling it doesn’t work ? I had to do it twice to make it work on my son’s Android phone 🤷♂️
thanks. would have never noticed this was on. yet another glorious "improvement" by youtube... :/
Not on by default for me.
Which browser, out of interest ?
Check out his microphone placement.
@@normalizedaudio2481 You mean mine ? What about it ?
Thanks!
Here's the joke: google adsense recommends creators master their content to -14 lufs. Now they automatically normalize by 6 db? Why not have us master to -8 lufs?!!!
Fair question - but if they did that, this feature would have to be even more aggressive, and sound worse as a result. Remember this doesn’t change the playback level of -14, the idea is just to makes varied content more consistently close to that reference. Which is a good thing for some videos with really huge changes in level - but not so good for videos like this, classical music, ASMR etc
My God - as if the soullessness of MP3s wasn’t bad enough - let’s make it even more shit
Turned it off. Hope it helps.
TH-cam is hellbent on destroying TH-cam.
The trouble is presumably it improves the views (because content with extremely dynamic material will be easier to listen to) which in their eyes is a good thing 😕