Hi Hats vs Youtube

T

TheContrast

New member
Hey, first time on the site so my apologies if this is a super noob question or an easy fix. For the longest time now when I upload beats to Youtube, my hi hats get messed up. You can "feel" them as if there is bass in them when there's not. It isn't noticeable when there is bass AND melody going at the same time but when I drop either one of those in various parts of the song, or for a change up or drop the hi hats sound horrible. I've tried removing as much low end as possible, as much high end as possible, stereo separation, lowering the volume, with and without compression the master channel. I'm exporting in WAV format so I know the reason is the quality of Youtube but I've only ever come across one producer who has the same problem, and hundreds who don't. Are they all just getting their tracks professionally mixed and mastered or do I just suck? lol. Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
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Thank you. Curiously, do you know if the information here will solve the problem for sure or is it just a possible solution?
 
I've come to the conclusion that the WMV file is the problem. I listen to the beat in FL Studio, perfect. I listen to the beat in Windows Movie Maker, perfect. Then I listened to the WMV file after it was exported from Windows Movie Maker, before I uploaded it to Youtube and the hi hats were messed up. So, hopefully that makes my problem clearer if anyone else may have some advice
 
I used to have this problem too. It's the same thing that happens on Soundcloud, although I find youtube to be just a bit worse.

These sites do not stream the high quality file that you upload in the same high quality lossless format. They can't because streaming would be impossibly slow.

The problem completely went away for me when I adjusted the way I mastered. Now, I use a limiter that actually catches true peaks instead of digital-only peaks and I leave about 0.5dB of headroom on the final master. I don't know if this is 100% foolproof, but since I've done this, I haven't had a single problem like that.

The very high end is exposed to some nasty distortion if levels are pushed too hot.

Don't take my word on this, but I think youtube is worse than soundcloud when it comes to quality in ways because I believe it matches the levels of music regardless of loudness. (Similar to Itunes). I'd love for someone to verify if this is true or not.
 
Ametrine said:
I used to have this problem too. It's the same thing that happens on Soundcloud, although I find youtube to be just a bit worse.

These sites do not stream the high quality file that you upload in the same high quality lossless format. They can't because streaming would be impossibly slow.

The problem completely went away for me when I adjusted the way I mastered. Now, I use a limiter that actually catches true peaks instead of digital-only peaks and I leave about 0.5dB of headroom on the final master. I don't know if this is 100% foolproof, but since I've done this, I haven't had a single problem like that.

The very high end is exposed to some nasty distortion if levels are pushed too hot.

Don't take my word on this, but I think youtube is worse than soundcloud when it comes to quality in ways because I believe it matches the levels of music regardless of loudness. (Similar to Itunes). I'd love for someone to verify if this is true or not.
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Thanks for the advice. I did try Soundcloud after I posted this thread and it is significantly less distorted than Youtube. And I'm not familiar with "true peaks" vs "digital peaks" but I'm going to try and figure it out.
 
True peaks are otherwise known as intersample peaks. Intersample peaks over 0dB occur as a result of interpolation of very hot samples during the digital to audio conversion process. It gets technical, but the easiest explanation is it is clipping that cannot be deteced by normal DAW meters. The distortion caused by intersample peaks is pretty much magnified by youtube and soundcloud because they stream at lower bit rates. That's why it's important to have either a dedicated limiter to catch ISPs or to leave some headroom to account for them.

To learn more about it and why you get that whishy washy hat sound, I really recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn_5-Agq9yc

Fairly long, but super detailed.
 
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Ametrine said:
Don't take my word on this, but I think youtube is worse than soundcloud when it comes to quality in ways because I believe it matches the levels of music regardless of loudness. (Similar to Itunes). I'd love for someone to verify if this is true or not.
Click to expand...
I read somewhere that youtube disregard any loudness from music as they re-process them for the streaming of the video. But I do believe as well that the sound quality follows the quality of the video you upload: everything that I uploaded so far was in Full HD mp4 and the music plays just perfect (when watching it in 1080p as well). If you drop the quality down to 480p, you'll notice difference in the sound.

Soundcloud, on the other hand, turns all music to 128kbps for the streaming, but they keep the same quality when the track is downloaded (although you get a mp3, not wav when you do this)
 
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