Best Youtube converter/downloader "A must have question"

[Choking Smoker]

I use Internet Download Manager. I bought it about 20 years ago and it's been one of the best investments ever. It automatically gives me the option of downloading all of the versions of any YouTube video available without any reconversion (All available resolutions and even HDR where available).

[Lord Reith]

Youtube seem to have completely changed their delivery system. It'll take a while for everyone to catch up.

The worst thing they've done recently is downgrade all audio on the free option to 50kb/s. Not sure if you can still get 128 if you sign into a free account.

[bobzilla]

The worst thing they've done recently is downgrade all audio on the free option to 50kb/s. Not sure if you can still get 128 if you sign into a free account.

That would explain why everything on Youtube sounds so tinny recently.

[mojofilter]

The worst thing they've done recently is downgrade all audio on the free option to 50kb/s. Not sure if you can still get 128 if you sign into a free account.

I was reading about this just yesterday. It seems YouTube has been upgrading their audio content to 160 kbps Opus, without telling anyone. Since 2015. It has frequencies that reach 20 KHz, and while still lossy, there are no compression artifacts. It makes files smaller than mp3 with improved quality. Quite some time ago, I came here to say "Hey, look at this neat thing I found - YT is upgrading their sound. I posted a screenshot, and was then roundly excoriated by a member because he said the only audio you could extract from it would be the mp3 sound in the video, which has a 16K cutoff... which was how it used to be done. Here's what you can get now. Recorded in Audacity while playing the video on the screen.

Opus waveform.jpg (130.25 KiB) Viewed 267 times

[Lord Reith]

It seems YouTube has been upgrading their audio content to 160 kbps Opus, without telling anyone.
Opus waveform.jpg

Yes I noticed the opus audio option a long time ago but ignored it because my tv etc won't read that codec.

It'll be interesting to see when the smoke has cleared what the new audio formats are and whether they have still downgraded the aac stream to 50kb/s.

I think the record companies are probably pretty unhappy that any idiot can directly download the mp3 audio of any song on youtube for nothing with no subscription. It is in fact 10x easier to download a free song from youtube now than it was from napster 20 years ago, so in essence youtube is no different from Napster. They say they pay artists royalties for streaming but now all the screaming companies are gradually scrapping artist royalties for tracks that get less than 1000 downloads a year. Of course, THEY still get ad revenue from placing third party ads at the start of people's songs.

I still think the end game, particularly with youtube, is to clear the playing field of all physical media. Once that is done, then they can charge what they like for streaming or pay per listen. Imagine a world where the only way to get your music is through amazon or youtube. That is bloody terrifying.

[Egg_Crisis]

Youtube seem to have completely changed their delivery system. It'll take a while for everyone to catch up.

The worst thing they've done recently is downgrade all audio on the free option to 50kb/s. Not sure if you can still get 128 if you sign into a free account.

I'm still getting 128 with youtube-dl / yt-dlp.
EDIT: Ah I see. You're talking about streaming, not downloading.

One odd thing I can't explain - in 2018 I downloaded some albums that'd been posted to youtube and the title said they were HQ/lossless and when I checked them spectrally the cutoff was around 22k rather than the usual 16k. I've no idea how they managed it.