YouTube video music

@elliottbnewcombjr - are you running an Intel or AMD cpu? What video card are you using?

Youtube videos actually have quite excellent sound quality, especially if you configure the player to do higher resolution such as 720p or 1080p. However, if you are using a streaming device such as Roku or Amazon Firestick FireTV, etc, the Youtube app on these devices is absolute crap. The usability is very poor. The audio and video quality is absolutely horrid, even if you have an excellent internet connection. This is really weird because the streaming apps for other things (such as netflix, etc.) are really excellent. It’s just the Youtube app that is written poorly.

Using a computer web browser will give you superior results on this every single time for Youtube!!! You can manually set the resolution in the player within the web browser and searching/usability is obviously superior. You don’t need an expensive high performance computer for this either. A cheap low end computer will be just fine for Youtube streaming. There are a few ways to approach this:

1. Mac Mini - You can get an older generation Mac Mini for a couple hundred bucks and this will do just fine, or get something newer if you want. These generally have both HDMI and USB output, so you can use your external DAC if you want.

2. Mini PC running Windows 10. The "Mini PC" or Intel NUC devices are the PC version of Mac Mini. They generally have both HDMI and USB outputs. You can get one of these for as cheap as a hundred bucks if you look around (i.e. ebay).

3. Mini Tower PC running Windows 10. You will probably spend at least a couple hundred dollars or more for something like this. But it allows for a higher quality solution. Get a cheap video card with HDMI if the PC is missing an HDMI. You can add a high end sound card, such as Asus Xonar Essence or EVGA Nu Audio (sound card is essentially a DAC with RCA analog outputs). Alternative, you can even go as far as a JCAT USB card to produce a cleaner higher quality USB output for your external DAC.

If you decide to go with the PC Windows 10 route, install Firefox browser for Youtube. The Firefox browser actually gives the best audio quality from this platform (yes, there is a significant difference in audio quality between Firefox / Chrome / Microsoft Explorer / Edge). You can still route HDMI output of this to your AVR if you wish.

Thanks for that link to the mini keypad/touchbad!  I've forwarded that on to a friend of mine who uses a Mac Mini to do youtube and streaming in his audio room.  It would be a great replacement for the normal mac keyboard/mouse.

There's another idea you can explore that may improve your audio/video from your HP slimline.  I have found that the upper end Nvidia video cards actually have a significantly better video quality.  I found this out when I upgraded my cheap little stock video card to a Palit Kalmx 1050 Ti video card (this won't work in your situation because of the size of the card and heatsink).

The best video card you can get in your HP Slimline is the Nvidia 1030 in a low profile card.  EVGA is an excellent video card company and offers a good solution which has a passive heat sink (no fans!):

https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Passive-Graphics-02G-P4-6332-KR/dp/B073VPKV26

It also comes with a low profile "short" bracket that's easy to replace (just unscrew the two bolts on the DVI port to replace the bracket).  These cards really don't get hot at all when doing 2D graphics (i.e. youtube videos, DVD/Bluray/etc.).  It's only when you do 3D gaming that the GPU heats up. 

These higher end video cards are better because in addition to the GPU, they have a number of capacitors along side the GPU to give stronger/smoother power current.  Also, I think they have much better HDMI transmitter chips and power supply.  This is likely to improve the audio quality as well (for digital audio over HDMI line).  For $100 investment, it could be a big game changer.

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Second idea is have you every thought about switching out the hard drive for an SSD?  This would lower the power supply requirements and also remove that slight "whine" from the hard drive motor.  It would also be cooler inside the case and a LOT faster than the standard hard drive (which is a higher speed 7200 rpm).  The SSDs have gotten really cheap nowadays.  You can get a 1TB SSD for about $100, or a 500GB SSD for $50 (depending on your storage needs).

Really? I had no idea! Youtube has always sounded rather lossy to me. Does Apple TV somehow get a different stream than would otherwise be available?

Are you streaming youtube from a device such as Roku or Amazon firestick?  Like I said before, the youtube app on these really sucks and you get all the "lossy" type of audio and video from this.  Computer web browser is superior, but if you're still getting "lossy" sound, then your computer audio system is not high enough level.

last night, hopping about YouTube, favorite/familiar music videos, Google Chrome browser beat Firefox slightly, the reverse of the prior night’s slight advantage to Firefox.

Sorry, no clues. Things may have changed in the last couple of years. When youtube stopped support for IE 6.0, I had to figure out a new browser. At that time, there was significant difference between the browsers. Maybe Chrome has improved?


SSD – this was just an idea to make the slimline quieter and reduce the computer’s power supply requirements. There may be a little improvement in sound quality because you are removing any electrical noise that hard drive motor, but that may not be noticeable.



CAD AND PHOTO EDITING really don’t require a powerful video card. They mostly depend on memory and cpu. It’s not until you get into stuff like 3D rendering or video editing / rendering or gaming that the video card becomes critical.



DIGITAL MUSIC – I’m not sure what you mean by “Isn’t the AV on the Macintosh motherboard involved?”. He’s just using the screen on the Macintosh to run media player software to “play” his music files or stream from a service such as Pandora. He’s likely doing a digital audio output using USB connection to a DAC.

If so, then no matter what streamer/lack of compression/___? isn’t the quality already set/converted/limited by the motherboard before a separate DAC?

Yes, if he’s streaming from Pandora or iHeartRadio or something, it is likely compressed. If he’s using Tidal, he may be streaming uncompressed and high-resolution audio.

Anything saved on HD is a certain digital quality. Any streaming service software is a certain quality. Still, going thru motherboard’s AV in/out?

You would think this and many still believe that data is data and there’s no difference in digital data between any platform. However, there is significant different in sound quality depending on what device is generating the digital pulses going to the DAC (or the digital pulses through HDMI to your Sony AVR). We get into a big discussion on getting a good clean power supply, circuits that clock the digital signal properly and the transmitter chips that generate the pulses onto the digital cable. There is a LOT of room to improve from a basic Macintosh laptop. Laptop is really not the best option here because it’s using a switching power supply adapter (unless you run it while on battery only). You cannot put in upgraded digital audio cards (such as JCAT USB card or a Pink Faun S/PDIF bridge card).

cleeds - if you scroll back and read carefully, you will see that I never said anything good about "streaming from AppleTV".  That comment was from emergingsoul.

My statements have always indicated a computer with full operating system and web browser.  I actually have a friend who had bad youtube quality from his AppleTV which confused him because playing back normal iTunes burned from CD through the AppleTV was just fine.

Ah, no.  The AppleTV youtube app suffers the same lossy / compressed / low quality audio just like the Roku / AmazonFire / Nvidia streamers.  The video quality on these is also crap.  Anything that uses the GooglePlay Youtube streaming app is very poor quality.

Just switching over to a Mac Mini (full computer OS with Safari web browser) is HUGELY better for youtube videos.