6 ms·

> since a lot of channels are annoying to me using headphones, they pan the audio sources too hard left/right and it's super distracting I find this interestin

by Kiro 2y ago

> since a lot of channels are annoying to me using headphones, they pan the audio sources too hard left/right and it's super distracting I find this interesting. Are you oversensitive? I've never even considered that this could be an issue. Do you experience the same problem with other things like music and games?

eCa 2y ago
Not the parent, but with similar view on panned audio. If it's music where it's done on purpose, no problem. But talking with audio in one ear? I'm out. Not sure why exactly, but it's very jarring. For me, it's one of the worst audio quality issues a video can have.
- opan 2y ago
  If you have mpv+yt-dlp set up you can fix this with an audio filter to mix to mono. mpv --audio-channels=mono 'urlhere' Somewhat related, I've used --vf=lavfi="hflip" to fix videos which are annoyingly mirrored to avoid copyright. You could also bind these options to keys in mpv to use on the fly. Some videos will only mirror some parts of their footage. Another fun one I bind in input.conf ctrl+shift+r cycle_values video-rotate "90" "180" "270" "0" Lets me rotate the video. I sometimes also just open a web image in mpv and rotate it like that to avoid tilting my head. I also have these binds for unbalanced audio, mainly used with 5.1 audio to sound better on headphones or stereo speakers, and the \ bind one seems to make normal stuff slightly louder also, so sometimes I hit it when I don't wanna turn up my speaker knob for one video. \ af toggle lavfi=[dynaudnorm=f=100] | af toggle lavfi=loudnorm
  - lovich 2y ago
    What are these tools? That sounds super useful for the most annoying YouTube flaws I run into
    - Daneel_ 2y ago
      If you're on Windows 10+ then there's a mono audio toggle in the Windows accessibility settings. I use it all the time to fix this exact issue.
      - louis-lau 2y ago
        Also in any other major OS afaik. It's a standard accessibility feature.
    - throwing_away 2y ago
      * https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv * https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp * https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink * https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ * https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe Did I miss any, chat?
      - justinc8687 2y ago
        https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube Is great for chromecasts and other google tv boxes. Basically newpipe, but in a tv format.
      - efreak 2y ago
        If you want to use sponsorblock with newpipe, use the tubular fork instead https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular
  - bananamerica 2y ago
    That's super complicated lol. Why not use the browser extension or accessibility feature?
    - throwing_away 2y ago
      That's not super complicated. I have carla running at all times and put all of my system audio through various loopback devices (browser, voice conferencing, and music/system) and then apply varying degrees of compression to them (no surprise sounds, hard limiting to hear quiet people, and bypass -- respectively). Of course everything goes through an extra limiter at the end to avoid clipping. I also send the voice conferencing input and output through RNNoise, so I can avoid emitting terrible sounds and avoid hearing them as well. People also seem to like me better when I cut my mids a little bit, but additional research is required. The reason for this is that I can change browsers (or games or voice apps) and they all think I'm just using a normal mic and headset, but it's actually like 10 LSP plugins and various routing. Still doesn't feel that complicated when you do a little bit at a time.
      - louis-lau 2y ago
        Yes, that does seem super complicated compared to the plug and play setup 99.9% of people are using.
        burnished 2y ago
        So you got velcro shoes too I take it?
      - 4ggr0 2y ago
        i love your spirit and it's interesting to read how you handle your sound, but it's almost comical to see someone describe using 10 freaking plugins to handle sound as 'not super complicated' :D
      - bananamerica 2y ago
        > People also seem to like me better when I cut my mids a little bit, but additional research is required. Instead of digitally recreating your voice so people like you more, have you considered getting some psychotherapy? Maybe? :/
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  As someone with minor but noticeable hearing issues, the reason it's so jarring is because our brain's audio processing center depends on both ears for understanding human speech. If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side. Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over.
  - gerdesj 2y ago
    >> Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over. That's when you discover you can lip read to a certain degree. There is way more to it than that. Speech is only one of the sets of cues we use when discoursing. Hand gestures, body posture, facial expressions and more are all involved too. I'm somewhat deaf in both ears, worse in one and always have been. I have had tinnitus since birth. My deafness does not affect all frequencies equally. Thankfully its mostly the high frequencies that have gone a bit dark and the tinnitus may be largely to blame. Anyway, your senses are all linked up and your brain is rather good at making connections to try and make up for deficiencies in some areas by co-opting other bits. I have minor lip reading skills to augment my hearing. I can't help it! I also swivel somewhat to try and deploy my better ear as the situation allows. One must try and maintain decorum and not look too weird 8) "If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side. Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over." This sounds like personal experience. I don't know how old you are but give it time ...
    - DavidPiper 2y ago
      "If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side." This is personal experience, but it is the personal experience of my specialist telling me. [1] is some less anecdotal information on the subject. My use of the term "game over" was specifically for audible speech interpretation. Lip reading is indeed something I'll probably need to get better at into my mid-30s and beyond as things continue to degrade. My hearing loss is low-frequency-first (Meniere's Disease [2]). [1] https://www.cochlear.com/au/en/home/diagnosis-and-treatment/how-cochlear-solutions-work/hearing-with-both-ears https://www.cochlear.com/au/en/home/diagnosis-and-treatment/... [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20374910 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-dise...
- jeffhuys 2y ago
  I totally agree, I will not watch a video with any issues like these. However, I also hate knowing that I'm hearing mono audio where stereo could be used. 99% of the videos I watch don't have panning issues, so to just turn off ALL stereo seems like such overkill to me...
- hrnnnnnn 2y ago
  There's a small YouTube creator who has uploaded videos with the narration hard panned. I told him about it in the comments, he went "hmm that's weird", then uploaded more videos with the same issue. I don't watch that channel any more.
slazaro 2y ago
In the real world you almost never hear something on one ear but not the other. Even if something is on your left, your right ear still hears it (differences in timing and volume inform your brain on the sound source location). Exception being if it's something really quiet right next to one ear, but that's relatively rare. So when things are mixed "improperly" (it's subjective), it's very distracting to me. I don't need to force mono everywhere, but it's very common in amateurish channels, and surprisingly also in movies and TV shows. Big productions tend to mix assuming you'll play on speakers (where it's fine to have something playing on just one channel/speaker, since both your ears will hear it), but when it mixes down to stereo and you listen on headphones, it's soooo common for them to pan something 100% to one channel when the source is supposed to be on that side. Like, somebody speaking to the left of the camera, and it comes 100% on the left channel and 0% on the right one. It's so unnatural and annoying to me.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >In the real world you almost never hear something on one ear but not the other. Even if something is on your left, your right ear still hears it Exactly, and this highlights the big difference between using headphones and using speakers. When you listen to some stereophonic music with one of the instruments panned completely to one side, through speakers that sound will only play from that side, however the sound will bounce around your room and you'll hear it in both ears, and the difference will tell you where it's coming from. But when you listen through headphones, you don't get this effect, and it sounds weird. With modern computing devices, it shouldn't be that hard to run the music through a filter that mixes the two channels when using headphones to avoid this problem. I wouldn't want to mix them to mono (that sounds bad too), but just a slight reduction of the stereo separation would be good.
  - shmeeed 2y ago
    Is it really possible that there's no driver that is capable of doing this in Windows? Did you look into this? I wouldn't know because I consider all those effect libraries, mixers and presets ("Concert Hall" - who would ever want that?) that usually come with the audio chipset driver suite as bloatware and try to get rid of them, or at least never touch them - but it would surprise me if there weren't anything that affects the amount of stereo separation...?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by Kiro 2y ago

eCa 2y ago

Not the parent, but with similar view on panned audio. If it's music where it's done on purpose, no problem. But talking with audio in one ear? I'm out. Not sure why exactly, but it's very jarring. For me, it's one of the worst audio quality issues a video can have.

opan 2y ago
If you have mpv+yt-dlp set up you can fix this with an audio filter to mix to mono. mpv --audio-channels=mono 'urlhere' Somewhat related, I've used --vf=lavfi="hflip" to fix videos which are annoyingly mirrored to avoid copyright. You could also bind these options to keys in mpv to use on the fly. Some videos will only mirror some parts of their footage. Another fun one I bind in input.conf ctrl+shift+r cycle_values video-rotate "90" "180" "270" "0" Lets me rotate the video. I sometimes also just open a web image in mpv and rotate it like that to avoid tilting my head. I also have these binds for unbalanced audio, mainly used with 5.1 audio to sound better on headphones or stereo speakers, and the \ bind one seems to make normal stuff slightly louder also, so sometimes I hit it when I don't wanna turn up my speaker knob for one video. \ af toggle lavfi=[dynaudnorm=f=100] | af toggle lavfi=loudnorm
- lovich 2y ago
  What are these tools? That sounds super useful for the most annoying YouTube flaws I run into
  - Daneel_ 2y ago
    If you're on Windows 10+ then there's a mono audio toggle in the Windows accessibility settings. I use it all the time to fix this exact issue.
    - louis-lau 2y ago
      Also in any other major OS afaik. It's a standard accessibility feature.
  - throwing_away 2y ago
    * https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv * https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp * https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink * https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ * https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe Did I miss any, chat?
    - justinc8687 2y ago
      https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube Is great for chromecasts and other google tv boxes. Basically newpipe, but in a tv format.
    - efreak 2y ago
      If you want to use sponsorblock with newpipe, use the tubular fork instead https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular
- bananamerica 2y ago
  That's super complicated lol. Why not use the browser extension or accessibility feature?
  - throwing_away 2y ago
    That's not super complicated. I have carla running at all times and put all of my system audio through various loopback devices (browser, voice conferencing, and music/system) and then apply varying degrees of compression to them (no surprise sounds, hard limiting to hear quiet people, and bypass -- respectively). Of course everything goes through an extra limiter at the end to avoid clipping. I also send the voice conferencing input and output through RNNoise, so I can avoid emitting terrible sounds and avoid hearing them as well. People also seem to like me better when I cut my mids a little bit, but additional research is required. The reason for this is that I can change browsers (or games or voice apps) and they all think I'm just using a normal mic and headset, but it's actually like 10 LSP plugins and various routing. Still doesn't feel that complicated when you do a little bit at a time.
    - louis-lau 2y ago
      Yes, that does seem super complicated compared to the plug and play setup 99.9% of people are using.
      - burnished 2y ago
        So you got velcro shoes too I take it?
    - 4ggr0 2y ago
      i love your spirit and it's interesting to read how you handle your sound, but it's almost comical to see someone describe using 10 freaking plugins to handle sound as 'not super complicated' :D
    - bananamerica 2y ago
      > People also seem to like me better when I cut my mids a little bit, but additional research is required. Instead of digitally recreating your voice so people like you more, have you considered getting some psychotherapy? Maybe? :/
DavidPiper 2y ago
As someone with minor but noticeable hearing issues, the reason it's so jarring is because our brain's audio processing center depends on both ears for understanding human speech. If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side. Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over.
- gerdesj 2y ago
  >> Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over. That's when you discover you can lip read to a certain degree. There is way more to it than that. Speech is only one of the sets of cues we use when discoursing. Hand gestures, body posture, facial expressions and more are all involved too. I'm somewhat deaf in both ears, worse in one and always have been. I have had tinnitus since birth. My deafness does not affect all frequencies equally. Thankfully its mostly the high frequencies that have gone a bit dark and the tinnitus may be largely to blame. Anyway, your senses are all linked up and your brain is rather good at making connections to try and make up for deficiencies in some areas by co-opting other bits. I have minor lip reading skills to augment my hearing. I can't help it! I also swivel somewhat to try and deploy my better ear as the situation allows. One must try and maintain decorum and not look too weird 8) "If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side. Put that person in a noisy crowd and it's game over." This sounds like personal experience. I don't know how old you are but give it time ...
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    "If you're deaf in one ear, your ability to hear and understand speech in particular goes down a lot, even if someone is talking on your good side." This is personal experience, but it is the personal experience of my specialist telling me. [1] is some less anecdotal information on the subject. My use of the term "game over" was specifically for audible speech interpretation. Lip reading is indeed something I'll probably need to get better at into my mid-30s and beyond as things continue to degrade. My hearing loss is low-frequency-first (Meniere's Disease [2]). [1] https://www.cochlear.com/au/en/home/diagnosis-and-treatment/how-cochlear-solutions-work/hearing-with-both-ears https://www.cochlear.com/au/en/home/diagnosis-and-treatment/... [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20374910 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-dise...
jeffhuys 2y ago
I totally agree, I will not watch a video with any issues like these. However, I also hate knowing that I'm hearing mono audio where stereo could be used. 99% of the videos I watch don't have panning issues, so to just turn off ALL stereo seems like such overkill to me...
hrnnnnnn 2y ago
There's a small YouTube creator who has uploaded videos with the narration hard panned. I told him about it in the comments, he went "hmm that's weird", then uploaded more videos with the same issue. I don't watch that channel any more.

slazaro 2y ago

In the real world you almost never hear something on one ear but not the other. Even if something is on your left, your right ear still hears it (differences in timing and volume inform your brain on the sound source location). Exception being if it's something really quiet right next to one ear, but that's relatively rare. So when things are mixed "improperly" (it's subjective), it's very distracting to me. I don't need to force mono everywhere, but it's very common in amateurish channels, and surprisingly also in movies and TV shows. Big productions tend to mix assuming you'll play on speakers (where it's fine to have something playing on just one channel/speaker, since both your ears will hear it), but when it mixes down to stereo and you listen on headphones, it's soooo common for them to pan something 100% to one channel when the source is supposed to be on that side. Like, somebody speaking to the left of the camera, and it comes 100% on the left channel and 0% on the right one. It's so unnatural and annoying to me.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>In the real world you almost never hear something on one ear but not the other. Even if something is on your left, your right ear still hears it Exactly, and this highlights the big difference between using headphones and using speakers. When you listen to some stereophonic music with one of the instruments panned completely to one side, through speakers that sound will only play from that side, however the sound will bounce around your room and you'll hear it in both ears, and the difference will tell you where it's coming from. But when you listen through headphones, you don't get this effect, and it sounds weird. With modern computing devices, it shouldn't be that hard to run the music through a filter that mixes the two channels when using headphones to avoid this problem. I wouldn't want to mix them to mono (that sounds bad too), but just a slight reduction of the stereo separation would be good.
- shmeeed 2y ago
  Is it really possible that there's no driver that is capable of doing this in Windows? Did you look into this? I wouldn't know because I consider all those effect libraries, mixers and presets ("Concert Hall" - who would ever want that?) that usually come with the audio chipset driver suite as bloatware and try to get rid of them, or at least never touch them - but it would surprise me if there weren't anything that affects the amount of stereo separation...?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]