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by xipix 495 days ago
Nice analysis, for 1x playback speed. If you're playing back at a different speed, for example, for music practice, YouTube audio is awful.

Why doesn't this huge AV platform use a better audio time stretch algorithm?

4 comments

I think time stretching is done natively by your browser, not by Youtube at all. I use https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed on sites...allows any media to be stretched. Did you try another browser?
That's no excuse for YouTube because (a) audio processing can be done in JS/WASM and (b) they have the influence to improve browser playbackRate implementations to something better [1].

Besides, their Android and iOS apps do slow music as bad if not worse than on web.

[1] https://bungee.parabolaresearch.com/compare-audio-stretch-te...

> audio processing can be done in JS/WASM

If there's reason to believe this is a useful way to handle time stretching, then there's reason to believe the same browser could do it natively just fine.

There is no reason to believe that browsers do it just fine if you have evidence for the contrary.
Which one in that list is better than the default one in Chrome? What media serving sites that you know of intentionally don't use native browser APIs?
Because this is such a niche use the number of users taking advantage of this "feature" would be so small as to not get anybody a promotion
Changing playback speed is a heavily used feature. They’ve also refined it several times, recently adding 0.05 speed increments not just 0.25.
took me a while to recognize you can long press on mobile yt to 2x, maybe even more than 2x but I ain’t figured out the finger incantation
Keyboard commands still make it jump in 0.25 steps.

Does anyone know a youtube-frontend that lets me change the playback speed in smaller steps using keyboard?

How did you become this convinced that it's some niche, unused feature? I'd go as far as to say it's essential. So many videos, especially of courses, out there that really need that 1.25x playback rate boost.
The niche was for the people using YT to learn to play a song. You’re now applying to something else, so that’s a bit of goal post moving.

Also, your use of need is odd as well, and seem to have convinced yourself that the world is wrong and only you’re right. If it needed, the creators would have made it that way

> Also, your use of need is odd as well, and seem to have convinced yourself that the world is wrong and only you’re right. If it needed, the creators would have made it that way

It's called having personal experiences and an opinion. You should try them sometime. It's almost as if appropriate tempo was in the "eye" of the "viewer", and so I was very clearly not suggesting my needs and essentials are universal objective truths in the first place. Getting extremely tired of having to insert "I think", "I believe", "in my opinion" to signal subjectivity in what - I think - are ostensibly subjective contexts, just so that I can avoid subsequent bikeshedding like this.

> You’re now applying to something else, so that’s a bit of goal post moving.

This will be crazy I know, but instead of this delightfully malice-assuming explanation, I simply missed the words where they said "music practice". Didn't help that "timestretch for music practice" is not a feature of YouTube, only timestretch is (as part of the playback rate adjustment feature), so when you were (according to my personal impression of the wording of your previous comment) generally addressing the feature, I replied in kind.

If I was being extra prickly, I'd accuse you of intentionally writing in a way so that you could accuse me of strawmanning you later (goalpost moving is a very loose fit here) for an easy dunk, but of course as someone who reaches for fallacies immediately, you wouldn't do that, right?

This is what distrust sown between people, as well as just plain not being able to know your discussion partner looks like. It's been increasingly frustrating me, and it looks like it's having an effect on you too.

> If I was being extra prickly, I'd accuse you of intentionally writing in a way so that you could accuse me of strawmanning you later

That’s the most bizarre comment I think I’ve ever seen. You didn’t have to reply to my comment. You’re now saying that I assume that the reading comprehension of everyone is so bad that I make comments specifically as gotchas. WTF is that logic? People that post comments in threads without taking the whole thread into consideration are like people that butt their way into a conversation based on the last sentence heard. It never goes well. It’s called social etiquette.

Just admit you didn’t read the full thread and that based on now understanding the full context of the conversation that your comment is out of place and have a nice day

It's also basic etiquette to not assume malice or that the other party is lying, but you explicitly and proudly continue to fail at that. So it's a bit tough for me to accept criticism from you regarding this.

> the reading comprehension of everyone is so bad

No, I am not saying this. This is just your headcanon, it is not even a remotely necessary presumption to have.

> You didn’t have to reply to my comment.

I felt compelled to after being told that I'm "moving goalposts". Obviously. Again, a subjectively perceived need.

> based on now understanding the full context of the conversation that your comment is out of place and have a nice day

Even with the additional context your original comment still rings unreasonable and self-absorbed. It is true however that I do not need you to explain why anymore. Have a nice day indeed.

Its the browser that does this on the client, not YouTube on the server.
Let's be fair, for anything music related, you'll be doing 1x speed... higher than that is usually speech only, where it doesn't matter as much.
If you're learning guitar, drums, piano, trumpet, etc, you'll want to start playing along at about 75% speed then work up until you can play 110% faster than you need to. YouTube's built in audio time stretch makes this a painful exercise.
What's the benefit of learning to play faster than you need to? I understand wanting to play slower, but why faster?
You want to play within your abilities, not right at the very edge of them. This technique nudges the edges out.
Fair enough. Never heard this technique before. Note that such a technique wouldn't translate to other skills like dancing, singing, sawing a piece of wood. Doing those things faster I can't imagine would be of any help in improving how you do them at normal speed.
Reliability builds on skill redundancy.