Re: Weiss Trombaeu on YouTube

Tashi wrote:


David are you suggesting perhaps to customize the settings to an mp3
setting for the audio when uploading to YouTube? The Apple tech guy
told me to "share" the file to Web. However, there are custom
settings, but I haven't explored those yet, and I don't even know if
one can change it to an mp3.

BTW, pay no attention to that guy nipping at your feet. He's just a
pup that needs some attention.

Well, I don't know where the reaction came from or why, and it doesn't bother me - the last thing I would try to record would be a classical piece. Even if I got five notes out of ten right my hand positions would be used as a demonstration of 'how not to play'.

Since I don't know what formats Youtube uses, or how it is encoded, I can't troubleshoot. I came up through mp3.com and learned by trial and error which programs/codecs/settings made guitar playing sound like 'underwater', which ones were clean.

I use a program called Amadeus Pro written by Martin Hairer, on Mac, for audio production. It was originally only a stereo editor Amadeus II but he's expanded it. I don't really want to edit sound or do multitracking but this low-cost software has been so good, stable and high in quality that I paid my $25 for his upgrade to Pro. See:

http://www.hairersoft.com/

In my experience, for acoustic guitar solo you need an audio streaming bitrate of at least 128kbps at 16 bit depth and 44.1kHz, to get a clean MPEG encoding. The more instruments and frequency bands you add to the mix, the lower the values you can get away with. It might sound illogical, but a solo instrument is about the hardest thing to encode for mp3 or other streaming audio formats. That's why bands often sound great and solo players have a hard time.

I save all recordings as AIFF (WAV for Windows users) which is also directly burnable to CD. Amadeus can then save a copy in a stack of different compressed forms including Ogg Vorbis and the ubiquitous .mp3, with extensive control. I encode use Joint Stereo and Constant Bitrate (variable bitrate can produce that fluctuating hiss), Strict Compliance, 320kbps which is very high quality, 16-bit. Files end up about 1/4 the size AIFFs, instead of 1/10th which is the streaming 128kpbs standard. Soundclick make automatic re-encoded versions at lower rates for lo-fi and hi-fi streaming, leaving the 320kpbs version for download only. That's for anyone who really needs to hear the sound of the guitar. The versions auto-created by Soundclick are better than anything I can make at such low bitrates, so they obviously have some excellent software.

This is what I don't know about Youtube - whether submitted files are re-encoded, if so how well, and whether your original file played back on Mac via Quicktime sounds much better than the Youtube experience.

It was still possible to tell the guitar is very lively and fast in response and well as firm - and a pleasure to hear the Tombeau played for its little cadences and patterns, and brighter moments.

David
.

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