Has You Tube improved its sound quality?

[idc]

I listen to mainly Spotify, with itunes a distant second for the bands/articts who are not yet available. I accept that itunes sounds better (Ihave have mainly lossless files). I always regarded You Tube as somewhere just to dip into and get an idea.

But I am presently listening to Radiohead's King of Limbs, which is availbale in its entirety on You Tube. I also listen to And So I Watch You From Afar on You Tube since they disappeared from Spotify.

Today's listening has jumped from itunes to Spotify to You Tube and it has dawned on me that You Tube's sound quality is right up there with Spotify and I doubt that in a blind test I could tell the difference. Spotify streams with Ogg Vobis at 320kbps.

Am I just slow on the uptake or has You Tube done something to make is sound so much better than before?

 

[Anonymous]

I always just dip into you tube for old records I like that are not available and to be honest the sound quality is always very poor. interested in what you have noticed though. I shall check it out and report back. Personally I am a big fan of 320Kbps so if you tube made this available it would be very cool.

 

[Anonymous]

It doesn't sound too bad. Very acceptable, but in my opinion it's 128kbps at best....

 

[idc]

Found this

"High Quality videos, introduced in March 2008, are shown at 480x360 with mono MP3 sound. They can also be viewed with the H.264 codec and stereo AAC audio by adding &fmt=18 to the end of the video URL. This offers a significant improvement over standard quality. This was followed up in November 2008 by 720p HD support. At the same time, the YouTube player was changed from a 4:3 aspect ratio to widescreen 16:9. This was introduced more than a year behind competing website Vimeo. 720p videos are shown in full 1280x720 and encoded with the H.264 codec. They also feature stereo audio encoded with AAC. From February 2009, all new videos are shown using H.264 and AAC by default for both Standard and High Quality viewing, allowing for higher quality videos at approximately the same file size."

and more details on Wikipedia. I was just slow on the uptake then