Help!!! How to package music that old people can play

[Joe C]

Personally I find the audio encode settings on 480p Youtube videos more than good enough. Last I checked it's Stereo 16-bit 128 kbps 44.1KHz, which is CD Audio quality. More than enough for small units like those. Honestly, it's more than enough per se, unless I want to just compare and criticize, not listen. You can first listen to it on Youtube and if you like it, you can download it and rip the audio in MP3. Don't re-encode, just rip. Youtube is video only. And try to stick with .mp4 videos, not .mkv. For some reason I see the latter harder to deal with in this regard.

Wouldn't it be difficult to download a Youtube video without changing it from an .mp4 video to a format like mp3 without changing the audio quality? I admit it's been quite a while since I have attempted to download any Youtube vids and convert. As I can recall, the results were not so good back then when I tried doing that.

 

[PP Mguire]

I use 4kyoutubetomp3 and bring everything down directly as MP3. Sounds fine in my car, and for some sound effects I wanted worked perfectly in videos I've editing. I've only had one issue and that's a particular song I've downloaded in the past sounds fine on Youtube but when downloaded gets real quiet.

 

[Smart_Guy]

Wouldn't it be difficult to download a Youtube video without changing it from an .mp4 video to a format like mp3 without changing the audio quality? I admit it's been quite a while since I have attempted to download any Youtube vids and convert. As I can recall, the results were not so good back then when I tried doing that.

There must be a change in quality in any re-encodes, but the things is that it could get so negligible to notice at all. Quality degradation in video could be difficult to minimize re-encoded but as for audio typically it's not. If the source is clear, the re-encode audio won't sound so different these days.

And I made a mistake, Youtube does not use MP3 audio. It uses AAC format and AFAIK it's the only audio format it uses. Even some 240p vids I've come across have 44.1 KHz 16-bit stereo audio.

I did many audio rips from Youtube and they sound just fine. Just make sure the source is good. I even listen to it in my car and it feels original.

Perhaps your experience is too old when ripping/conversion software/encodes (from Youtube to mp3 at least) were still not developed enough?