Stereo Tool

Hey guys, how's it going? I am having a predicament with volume fluctuation when running playlists for youtube music videos.

Running a test with some tunes on youtube and especially with these 2 videos below, the first one is profoundly louder but both are louder than most other music videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebxmH5V6A8s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_xwnb3cymc

I have tried using different comp/limiters and also mp3 volume levelling software which works great with mp3's but baffled why it does not work for youtube music videos. So can I ask and trouble anyone here to run those 2 videos through ST and let me know if you are able to get those two at same volume as other videos with average volume any time at your convenience please? Guess I can try the demo myself but I won;t know which settings to use is why I am asking for this help. Thanks guys.

Yes, works perfectly, I even use it with movies and sound is always constant with different movies. I never have to adjust volume unless conditions/noise in the room change.

Nice, thank you!! Will give it a try as I am guessing it should work with default settings?

Hi again. The short answer is yes, however, it depends on the preset and license capabilities.

The more technical answer has to do with Youtube's built-in normalization (which can be seen if you right-click, and look at the "stats for nerds" then the Volume/Normalized line -- more info here https://productionadvice.co.uk/stats-for-nerds/). The Steve Miller Band video for some reason doesn't use the built-in normalization, which I've not seen in a long long time on Youtube; thus it's VERY loud (-5 LUFS-i) ... louder than most CDs which are usually mastered for competitive loudness. The Faces video however does have normalization enabled and doesn't seem louder than other music videos to me (-14 LUFS-i).

The answer you may not want to hear is the new Adaptive compressor is better at this than ever, but it's not a free/basic feature. I recommend trying the presets Adaptive Bass Monster and Aquinas to test out this compressor mode. Luckily there are still dozens of other presets that sound almost as good when the paid features are disabled. There's a banner at the top of Stereo Tool when an unlicensed feature is enabled, and clicking it takes you to a button to disable these features.

Bojcha makes a lot of great-sounding presets you should try that don't sound terribly different when set to Basic/unlicensed mode. Try StudioONE, Average Joe, or Hello NINE.

edit: The default settings of each module aren't really recommended. It's best to load a preset then disable unlicensed features.

Well it depends on the preset, not every preset will be well suited for that. Plus, i noticed the input signal goes in the red with the first song, so make sure to enable the declipper (Of course you can just set lower volume on youtube, but then it might be too low for some of the clips and even a better preset might struggle to keep the same volume).

If it works, I will purchase the basic version. Can you tell me which exact settings you use to get the Steve Miller tune's volume similar to the rest please?

It's a mix of settings - the AGC, the Low level boost, the compressors. But for a beginner it takes months to get what you want with custom settings, especially if you only have the basic version, so for a start it's really best to first try some of the integrated presets.

Gotcha, thanks, will do and report back.

Ok let me go through all of this in slo-mo please to be sure I am understanding everything. This is a screenshot of both tunes side by side, as you can see, on my end, the Miller tune shows 27% normalization, does this mean maybe that youtube's normalization works differently for different people?

https://i.postimg.cc/HWP0YLmk/comparison.png

No, it has to do with your player volume being at 27%. Please read the blog post I linked to understand it better.