YouTube now has a feature called “Stable volume.”
I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I think it may be a normalizer and compressor that evens out the volume so you don’t have big jumps in volume between videos and even parts of a video itself.
May be problematic for music. pic.twitter.com/kh0IGoXmpe
— M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY (@thisistechtoday) July 15, 2023
As spotted by M. Brandon Lee, YouTube is currently rolling out a “Stable Volume” feature on mobile, that helps normalize volume levels across videos.
This is a very neat feature addition, as it’s far too common to end up blasting your ears moving from one video to the next, constantly adjusting volume. As of right now, YouTube automatically normalizes all videos down to the loudness standard of -14LUFS (the web video standard for audio levels), but doesn’t do anything for videos with audio quieter than that. This means that there is an upper ceiling for audio levels, videos uploaded with really quiet audio still require the viewer to crank volume up to hear it, still resulting in an… unpleasant experience upon clicking on a video with normal volume levels.
Based on the screenshot, this is a mobile-only test at the moment, and I can’t get it to show up on any of my devices, but I really hope it comes to the web player, too, as this issue is just as likely to affect desktop viewers as mobile.
Am I mistaken to think that it function like the audio compressor of FrankerFaceZ on Twitch?
— Laurent LaSalle (@LaurentLaSalle) July 15, 2023
While it’s unclear how exactly each of these features work or differ on a technical level, the YouTube “Stable Volume” feature does most likely work similarly to FrankerFaceZ’s audio compressor for Twitch live streams.
If you don’t want your videos to be reliant on this feature, check out my video on achieving perfect audio balance:
