6 ms·

I normally don’t mind YouTube ads all that much, and I don’t see them on desktop browsers anyway. However, I was bombarded with ads for NordVPN and their crap

by apecat 7y ago

I normally don’t mind YouTube ads all that much, and I don’t see them on desktop browsers anyway. However, I was bombarded with ads for NordVPN and their crap made me so angry it pretty much sold me a paid YouTube membership. Hard to relax with some totally not weird ASMR when my blood pressure is through the roof because some chirpy ad agency dude wants to show me how much a VPN is like an umbrella or whatever.

gsich 7y ago
No adblock?
- apecat 7y ago
  Yes, on desktop. Harder to achieve with the mobile app. And as it happens, I don't use a desktop OS to play stuff that helps me fall asleep.
  - nullandvoid 7y ago
    Just use firefox on mobile it has extension support
    - apecat 7y ago
      Nah https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
      - nullandvoid 7y ago
        Ouch a win for android here then
mvexel 7y ago
> However, I was bombarded with ads for NordVPN and their crap made me so angry it pretty much sold me a paid YouTube membership. For me it was those incessant Grammarly ads. A service, by the way, that has its own serious security and privacy concerns[0]. (I feel like YouTube Premium ($18/mo for up to 6 people) is a better deal than Spotify Premium ($15/mo for up to 6 people) for a household like mine where we listen to a lot of music and use YouTube a lot. I don't know how YouTube compares to Spotify when it comes to music selection however.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16315684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16315684
- apecat 7y ago
  Yeah, Grammarly is creepy as hell. I've explicitly banned it (and similar services) at work. As for Youtube music, yup, that's undeniably a good deal. The music services should watch out, especially in younger demographics (I'm already 30+, Spotify premium user since 2009). Apple will probably push Music even harder and bundle that with their new video streaming. Spotify's really trying to become the defacto podcast service, which sucks in its own right (unlike Apple Podcasts, no user facing RSS support for indie premium content etc. Podcasting is the last free rich medium on the internet, largely thanks to Apple). As for music, I'm too deep in the Spotify ecosystem myself, with stuff like proper Last.fm integration, recommendations and consistent audio quality. I can't really enjoy music with that mushy sound typical for content that has been lossy-lossy transcoded tons of times. Of course, I have to deal with that for all the awesome live takes[1] available on Youtube, and there I'm of course just grateful they exist. Spotify's audio didn't use to be all that great, except with the normalization turned off. Now with their 'quiet' normalization option, that doesn't compress quiet tracks (a clear edge over Apple Music), it's starting to sound transparent to me, as -q 9 encoded (~320 kbps) Vorbis should. Youtube doesn't allow disabling of normalization at all, and it's not super clear to me when tracks are clean encodes sourced from the proper music distribution ecosystem that stocks Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal et al. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4V66UP4aDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4V66UP4aDs
  - mvexel 7y ago
    Really helpful guidance on the audio quality considerations, thank you!
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    > ...it's not super clear to me when tracks are clean encodes sourced from the proper music distribution ecosystem... Isn't that kind of the point? If you can't tell which is which without a visual cue (aka bias-generator) then they sound the same.
    - apecat 7y ago
      Yes! Which is why you won't hear me waste a whole lot of breath yammering about lossy compression. I'd sure pay Spotify extra for lossless, because I'm weird in ways I'll reveal below, but I agree that people should give lossy compression a break. Well-encoded AAC and Vorbis averaging over 256 kbps are very transparent-sounding, in ways that never was possible with mp3. If I put in time, I get 5/6 right in this famous test from NPR's website[1], just because mp3 is awful and ancient. But I double dare anyone to blind test Opus as low as ~128 and ~160 kbps and working upwards, with decent gear. Having grown up with shitty mp3s, it feels like magically good. And it's free software. Even lossy-lossy transcoded AAC and Opus, which Youtube uses for a lot of stuff, sounds shockingly fine, most of the time, on most equipment, if the original copy was ok to begin with. All this is mostly passable, especially as background music. That is, until you run into special circumstances, like listening attentively with halfway-decent equipment. Spotify's default normalization mode sometimes can adds dynamic compression, which sounds bad in itself. But this can make artifacts stand out in ways shouldn't (thank god for the 'quiet' setting, added sometime in 2018). This is especially true with poor source material, for example the stupidly bright 90s Led Zeppelin remasters, which still float around on tons of curated Spotify playlists, despite being superseded by really good releases. So what I'm trying to say is that I want to maintain a music library I can pull up on any device and expect consistently good quality during playback. Take my little hobby I discussed here as an example (that is, me and my friends independently inventing the Japanese audiophile parlor/café concept) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583900 Just because I can't hear a guitar riff getting slightly distorted or hi-hats smeared when I listen at work, doesn't mean I won't hear it with in an acoustically outstanding room with 5k worth of audio gear. This problem is very pronounced with Youtube material when there's a poor supply chain, so I won't add a bunch of random garbage from Youtube in a playlist on the tram and expect to actually enjoy it later as I'm leaning back in a proper listening room. Spotify, on the other hand is relatively close to providing a universally sane way to access music on any device. 1 - https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Use hooktube & adblock
- apecat 7y ago
  Looks cool, but feeling slightly twitchy about going anywhere near that with my Google account after last week's news https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759
  - catalogia 7y ago
    That guy was a troll. Many of us have been using youtube-dl extensively every day for years without any trouble.
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      Why would you think he was a troll? I've had my google account suspended without explanation.
      - fouric 7y ago
        Read the comments. The claimed suspension message was extremely unlikely to be real.
        ryanlol 7y ago
        I have read the comments, I wouldn't be so sure. >First I got an email from Google saying that I was using 3rd party app outside of Play Store to go around Youtube ads I absolutely do not believe this part, but I'm willing to dismiss this as confusion on the users end. However, the rest of the comments by the user accurately describe how google account suspensions work. The same user had also created some rather reasonable issues before this one.
        apecat 7y ago
        I speak Finnish, and if I'm 'google cancelled my main account'-level pissed, I just might pick a username very much like that for a site I don't really want to be on in the first place. Maybe a cultural thing. So that argument is moot. Agree with ryanlol's comment here next to mine on the rest. I'd really want more clarifications before I touch third party Youtube clients while logged in (which I want to be, for recommendations etc).
hinkley 7y ago
We were just complaining the other day about tech companies being run by the marketing folks. If you were a State, wouldn’t you be attracted to organizations that seem to be market driven? First, they have brand recognition, so they’re a fat target. Also they’re signaling hard that the engineers aren’t in charge. Probably more likely corners are being cut and morale is low.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
NewPipe is free.

by apecat 7y ago

gsich 7y ago

No adblock?

apecat 7y ago
Yes, on desktop. Harder to achieve with the mobile app. And as it happens, I don't use a desktop OS to play stuff that helps me fall asleep.
- nullandvoid 7y ago
  Just use firefox on mobile it has extension support
  - apecat 7y ago
    Nah https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
    - nullandvoid 7y ago
      Ouch a win for android here then

mvexel 7y ago

> However, I was bombarded with ads for NordVPN and their crap made me so angry it pretty much sold me a paid YouTube membership. For me it was those incessant Grammarly ads. A service, by the way, that has its own serious security and privacy concerns[0]. (I feel like YouTube Premium ($18/mo for up to 6 people) is a better deal than Spotify Premium ($15/mo for up to 6 people) for a household like mine where we listen to a lot of music and use YouTube a lot. I don't know how YouTube compares to Spotify when it comes to music selection however.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16315684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16315684

apecat 7y ago
Yeah, Grammarly is creepy as hell. I've explicitly banned it (and similar services) at work. As for Youtube music, yup, that's undeniably a good deal. The music services should watch out, especially in younger demographics (I'm already 30+, Spotify premium user since 2009). Apple will probably push Music even harder and bundle that with their new video streaming. Spotify's really trying to become the defacto podcast service, which sucks in its own right (unlike Apple Podcasts, no user facing RSS support for indie premium content etc. Podcasting is the last free rich medium on the internet, largely thanks to Apple). As for music, I'm too deep in the Spotify ecosystem myself, with stuff like proper Last.fm integration, recommendations and consistent audio quality. I can't really enjoy music with that mushy sound typical for content that has been lossy-lossy transcoded tons of times. Of course, I have to deal with that for all the awesome live takes[1] available on Youtube, and there I'm of course just grateful they exist. Spotify's audio didn't use to be all that great, except with the normalization turned off. Now with their 'quiet' normalization option, that doesn't compress quiet tracks (a clear edge over Apple Music), it's starting to sound transparent to me, as -q 9 encoded (~320 kbps) Vorbis should. Youtube doesn't allow disabling of normalization at all, and it's not super clear to me when tracks are clean encodes sourced from the proper music distribution ecosystem that stocks Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal et al. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4V66UP4aDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4V66UP4aDs
- mvexel 7y ago
  Really helpful guidance on the audio quality considerations, thank you!
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  > ...it's not super clear to me when tracks are clean encodes sourced from the proper music distribution ecosystem... Isn't that kind of the point? If you can't tell which is which without a visual cue (aka bias-generator) then they sound the same.
  - apecat 7y ago
    Yes! Which is why you won't hear me waste a whole lot of breath yammering about lossy compression. I'd sure pay Spotify extra for lossless, because I'm weird in ways I'll reveal below, but I agree that people should give lossy compression a break. Well-encoded AAC and Vorbis averaging over 256 kbps are very transparent-sounding, in ways that never was possible with mp3. If I put in time, I get 5/6 right in this famous test from NPR's website[1], just because mp3 is awful and ancient. But I double dare anyone to blind test Opus as low as ~128 and ~160 kbps and working upwards, with decent gear. Having grown up with shitty mp3s, it feels like magically good. And it's free software. Even lossy-lossy transcoded AAC and Opus, which Youtube uses for a lot of stuff, sounds shockingly fine, most of the time, on most equipment, if the original copy was ok to begin with. All this is mostly passable, especially as background music. That is, until you run into special circumstances, like listening attentively with halfway-decent equipment. Spotify's default normalization mode sometimes can adds dynamic compression, which sounds bad in itself. But this can make artifacts stand out in ways shouldn't (thank god for the 'quiet' setting, added sometime in 2018). This is especially true with poor source material, for example the stupidly bright 90s Led Zeppelin remasters, which still float around on tons of curated Spotify playlists, despite being superseded by really good releases. So what I'm trying to say is that I want to maintain a music library I can pull up on any device and expect consistently good quality during playback. Take my little hobby I discussed here as an example (that is, me and my friends independently inventing the Japanese audiophile parlor/café concept) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583900 Just because I can't hear a guitar riff getting slightly distorted or hi-hats smeared when I listen at work, doesn't mean I won't hear it with in an acoustically outstanding room with 5k worth of audio gear. This problem is very pronounced with Youtube material when there's a poor supply chain, so I won't add a bunch of random garbage from Youtube in a playlist on the tram and expect to actually enjoy it later as I'm leaning back in a proper listening room. Spotify, on the other hand is relatively close to providing a universally sane way to access music on any device. 1 - https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago

Use hooktube & adblock

apecat 7y ago
Looks cool, but feeling slightly twitchy about going anywhere near that with my Google account after last week's news https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759
- catalogia 7y ago
  That guy was a troll. Many of us have been using youtube-dl extensively every day for years without any trouble.
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    Why would you think he was a troll? I've had my google account suspended without explanation.
    - fouric 7y ago
      Read the comments. The claimed suspension message was extremely unlikely to be real.
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        I have read the comments, I wouldn't be so sure. >First I got an email from Google saying that I was using 3rd party app outside of Play Store to go around Youtube ads I absolutely do not believe this part, but I'm willing to dismiss this as confusion on the users end. However, the rest of the comments by the user accurately describe how google account suspensions work. The same user had also created some rather reasonable issues before this one.
      - apecat 7y ago
        I speak Finnish, and if I'm 'google cancelled my main account'-level pissed, I just might pick a username very much like that for a site I don't really want to be on in the first place. Maybe a cultural thing. So that argument is moot. Agree with ryanlol's comment here next to mine on the rest. I'd really want more clarifications before I touch third party Youtube clients while logged in (which I want to be, for recommendations etc).

hinkley 7y ago

We were just complaining the other day about tech companies being run by the marketing folks. If you were a State, wouldn’t you be attracted to organizations that seem to be market driven? First, they have brand recognition, so they’re a fat target. Also they’re signaling hard that the engineers aren’t in charge. Probably more likely corners are being cut and morale is low.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

NewPipe is free.