Listening to YouTube via FireFox at my desktop/computer rig…. Stellar DAC… Woo tube amp… Focal Clear headphones… nice… (sure nice enough to know YouTube ain’t all that great for sound!).
384/32 in the display…. what is this? What “format” does YouTube use and is it always the same? YouTube has a setting for video quality but not for audio no?
Any information on YouTube audio?
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I’m not sure but I suspect you are using a windows PC. If that is incorrect disregard this post.
You tube uses your PC audio drivers to play back sound and there is no way to change that from what I know. It seems like you have properly set your PC audio settings to use 384/32, similar to what I have:
You can find this setting under sound settings on Windows 10 and 11.
With this setting in windows, no matter what youtube sends you, windows will convert it to the output format specified in this setting. Audio software like Roon, Jriver, and others have the ability to choose different audio drivers that bypass the windows audio drivers, resulting in bitrates that line up with the music you are actually playing.
I hope this helps explain what’s going on.
Thanx… yes Windows. I am using the PSAudio-provided driver and, as I understand it, it bypasses the Windows kernal. As long as you keep the volume set at 100 in the PC and have processing OFF, I thought I am supposed to get bit-perfect from the source… in this case, what YouTube is sending.
Am I wrong here?
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I think you may be wrong. While the PS audio driver is being used to send the music to the DAC, YouTube does not have a way to talk directly to the PS Audio driver like some of the music software I mentioned. As a result, the Windows driver gets the music before PS Audio and up-samples or down-samples the audio signal to what is specified in that setting.
Software like Roon, Jriver, etc, bypasses the Windows drivers and talks directly to PSAudio drives, provided that you have set them up to do so, then you get bit-perfect audio.
Hmmm…. I am having trouble finding detailed technical information about this.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
OK, bigger mystery….
Playing YouTube via FireFox… same setup as above…. I see two different rates depending on the DAC…. Same stream (Joe Jackson doing Heaven and Hell in a live studio presentation). I have both the DirectStream and the Stellar connected to the same PC workstation both via USB. Through Windows, I can click and route the stream to either DAC with two clicks.
To DirectStream: 352.8 / 24
To Stellar: 384 /32
What the heck? Why different? On both, I have the Windows volume to 100 and no sound effects. Both are running the PSAudio provided drivers.
No one from PSAudio to help here?
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I presume you are wondering what native resolution is used by youtube instead of what sample and bit rate you have selected in your desktop computer operating system for your DAC driver.
You might find this article interesting:
Thanx for this…. yea, I went and checked my Windows setting for the Stellar and DIrectStream, and I selected the highest possible hence the 352.8 and 384…. but still, why are these two different, and what is going on inside with these drivers?
There is something I don’t understand about the Windows architecture here. So, when I play files from my server that is mapped to my PC via windows…. I play with Foobar and I get a bit-perfect stream through the PC. This is confirmed via PSAudio’s test files that display on my DirectStream (the Stellar does not have this functionality… it should). But when you play a source like YouTube, the output bit rate is selected via Windows Tool.
So… so should I set Windows to match what YouTube is sending to thus preserve the best sound quality? I am assuming that bit manipulation to output something different is destructive to sound.
From that article: “For music videos, YouTube recommends a bitrate of 320kbps or higher for two channels. This ensures that the audio quality is high enough to match the video quality.” It’s that “or higher” that bugs me. I guess I will have to experiment.
Cripes…
Peace
Bruce in Philly
Yes, please use your ears to select what resolution works best for your Windows PC.
I have 3 different DACs and watch YouTube on all three. I also use blu-ray writers to watch Blu-Ray Discs or rarely DVDs. I used these sources to evaluate what setting to use in my Windows 11 PCs which I select in the Advanced tab in the Audio Driver properties panel.
I found I liked sound from video best at the 24-48k setting for my bedroom DAC and my main Computer DAC. Higher settings could add distortion for these.
For my living room DAC I use 24-384k without sound degradation.
Cheers! 
