Impressions and Thoughts on the Sound Quality of YouTube Music

It may have been more than two years ago now, but while surfing YouTube, I was able to come across some music sources that were extremely fresh, and had a lively sound quality that I had never heard before.

These were not intended as the master source of packaged media such as CDs, but were clearly recorded with only a few microphones and simple mixing equipment. Although they may be rudimentary, they are very personal and fine recordings.

Here are two such examples below.

The one above is titled Natalia Lafourcade - Soledad y El Mar (En Manos de Los Macorinos) [La Fiesta Parte II], and you can listen to it on YouTube at the link HERE. 

The selection above is titled さよなら夏の日」/山下達郎 hima.cover#37, and you can listen to it HERE. 

When I listened to these vivid recordings, I remembered that with the digitalization of recording equipment, it has become smaller and more sophisticated, making it extremely easy to record with dramatically improved sound quality compared to outdated analog tape recording.

First, let's take a look at what I experienced regarding the sound quality and the limitations of analog recording.

Already half a century ago, my field of expertise was designing the tape transport mechanisms for open-reel tape recorders and improving the performance of it.

However, analog tape recorders, including cassette decks, had definite negative factors that inhibited sound quality from a physical and mechanical standpoint. This is called modulation noise that is always added to original signal during recording and playback.

Wow and flutter causes FM modulation, and fluctuations in tape tension causes level fluctuations, which cause AM modulation in the original signal. These modulations create sidebands on both sides of the original signal, and when you record and play back a single tone, say 1 KHz or 3 KHz, this can be clearly heard as incidental sound or noise.

So every time I watched the spectrum of this modulated noise with a frequency analyzer, I wondered why it sounds like such a normal music recording and playback to our hearing.

Therefore, the more you dub from the master tape, the more the sound quality deteriorates, meaning the modulation noise doubles in the original signal.

Anyways, I suppose this may be one of the reasons behind the belief that the first edition of analog LPs based on the original master tape are the best.

Another negative point is the fact that the hiss noise during tape recording determines the lower noise level of the S/N ratio. This noise is relatively easy to hear in an old analog LP, and even at normal playback levels, it may be louder than the actual background noise in a quiet place. 

Well, in such a situation about two years ago, I wanted to actually hear and experience the sound of such a digital recording, and acquired a used Tascam digital recorder, the DR-100MK2 Linear PCM Recorder, which would be comparable to the recording equipment that might be used for these recent personal YouTube posts.

At the same time, I also purchased a pair of reasonably priced condenser microphones.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at playing musical instruments because I'm clumsy, so all I could do was to record some conversations with my close friends and check the quality of the playback. I sent those audio files by email to share with other distant friends this information about our mutual audio exploration.

However, the Tascam digital recorder's external microphone only worked once, fortunately on October 4, 2022, when I recorded six takes of Alan-san's blues guitar performances.

Alan-san played various rare vintage guitars from the 1930s, and the music he played touched my heart. 

What impressed me about using such a small and truly affordable digital recording equipment was that it recorded the background noise with amazing clarity, and that this background noise produced a mysterious realism in the music when played back.

Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, with analog recording, such background noise would have been buried under the hiss noise of the tape. 

Well, the clear background noise may give us a sense of the true silence behind it. I realized the expression of silence would be one of the key factors for Real Sound music playback for Hi-Fi audio. 

Now, regarding the overall sound quality of the DR-100 MK2's recordings, I have very little knowledge in this field, so I can't say much. However, I heard no particular coloration in the sound, and from my many years of experience, I suppose that the sound quality of the microphone, which is the transducer that converts air vibrations into electrical energy, would dominate the quality of the recording, even when using such an entry revel digital recorder.

I probably should have explained this earlier, but, the DR-100 MK2 has a setting feature for recording that allows the selection of various audio file formats, like the  WAV format (44.1k/48k/96kHz, 16/24 bit), or the MP3 format (32~320 kbps, 44.1 k/48 kHz).

To explain briefly, WAV is an uncompressed PCM recording format of the original data before compression, and MP3 is the compressed audio format of the compressed file with far smaller data size than WAV.

I'm sure I don’t need to mention this, but in the WAV format, the quantization bit number indicates the size of the dynamic range of the sound, and the sampling frequency indicates the upper limit of the frequency, so generally, the higher these numbers, the higher the fidelity or the quality of recording and playback. 

Actually, there was another reason why I decided to purchase a digital recorder like this even though I had no clear recording target. This reason was so I could investigate the question of whether or not I could hear the difference in sound quality between the uncompressed sound sources and the compressed sound sources. 

I didn't have the ability to do rigorous recording/playback tests, but through normal use I wanted to hear what the difference in sound quality between WAV and MP3 might be.

To be honest, I found the sound quality of MP3 at 48 kHz at 250 kbps, and 320 kbps, to be fairly acceptable, and without any discomfort for me.

That means, and this may be a bit of an exaggeration, that this result might confirm that the sound quality of YouTube Music, which requires uploading compressed sound sources such as by MP3, etc., with a maximum streaming speed of 256 kbps, could be enjoyable for me.

To put it concretely, my intuition tells me that when listening to my favorite music through YouTube Music with the compressed sound streaming sources, I just feel that the content of the music itself brings joy and hope to the depths of my heart and soul. 

However, there is certainly a difference in sound quality between WAV and MP3 in terms of physical characteristics, and there are also YouTube posts about comparison experiments, such as the MP3 vs WAV example from the Layne Mitchell Show (link HERE). 

I applaud the inexhaustible universe of music that you can find on YouTube Music, for example, that includes new music posts every hour of every day from all over the world. So that alone is a luxury and blessing for me.

Let me briefly write about Amazon Music, which is another streaming service that I enjoy. This is completely personal, but more than half a century ago, when I became familiar with audio, jazz was a huge force in music that coincided with the heyday of Japanese audio in the 1970s. 

I particularly enjoyed listening to analog LPs of piano performances and jazz vocals.

I've collected a fair amount of Bill Evans' LPs. Oscar Peterson's “The Trio” was a favorite of mine, and it was my first time experiencing the excitement of a live recording.　

However, what I liked most was jazz vocals, and for some reason I don't know why, I felt the jazz in the singing voices of Mel Tome and Anita O’Day.

These were part of the origins of my long audio adventure, and what I'm trying to say here is that Amazon Music makes it very easy to access every kind of music that evokes my nostalgia.

Furthermore, I can immerse myself in the music with better remastered sound quality. For recent recording sources on Amazon Music, they are distributed in streaming formats such as Ultra HD, HD, and even Dolby ATMOS, so I can enjoy songs that I once enjoyed on CDs or analog LPs with good sound quality with ease.

I haven't tried other music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, which seem to be competing with YouTube Music and Amazon Music for higher quality music streaming.

They must be great treasure troves of music, just like YouTube Music and Amazon Music.

Well, I have made similar statements many times in my writings, but such music streaming services are a favorable technological revolution that will be exactly what music lovers and audio enthusiasts alike have been looking for, and this is truly good news, I believe. 

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