(If this is better suited to a different forum, feel free to move it.)
Holy crap, I am discovering firsthand that the audio for everything on YouTube is balanced for listening through small computer speakers.
I finally decided to run my computer into my stereo’s auxiliary input (via 1/8" stereo miniplug split to two RCA plugs), hoping for better sound quality. Unfortunately, with this setup, literally everything I try to watch/listen to on YouTube is so insanely bass-heavy that it’s almost unlistenable (and I’m a bass player). I want to hear the bass, but I don’t want to hear mud.
I suspect I’m going to be spending the next two weeks trying to find the right balance, fiddling with EQ on both my computer and my stereo.
Any suggestions? Admittedly, without y’all being able to handle my stereo, suggestions might be pointless. I have a 3rd-party app on my Mac that provides EQ controls, and my stereo has its own controls. On the Mac end, I’ve so far only tried the EQ presets provided by that 3rd-party app, and, unfortunately, the presets that cut the bass to acceptable levels of clarity also somehow strip out the vocals.
Out of curiousity, what is your computer audio set to right now? In Windows, you can specify which kind of speakers you are using which will drastically change the output.Your Mac should be the same under system settings.
Some poking around revealed that that 3rd-party EQ app “identifies” itself to the OS as a “device”, meaning that all audio is routed to it, instead of to the internal speakers or headphone jack. Then it handles the routing to the actual speakers itself.
Disabling this app solved much of the problem, and I think I see why. The whole intent of the app is to improve the sound quality of my Mac’s internal speakers by customizing the EQ based on my particular model of Mac. (The initial setup of the app instructed me to disconnect any external speakers.)
That said, YouTube videos are still way too “bassy”. Listening to the same songs via iTunes isn’t nearly as bad, and of course playing the same song from a CD in the stereo itself sounds just fine. So it still seems that YouTube does something to the audio of uploaded videos to “optimize” it for small computer speakers.
Another problem I suspect is that I’m simply sitting too close to the stereo’s speakers, and my ears just aren’t in the right place to hear the sound properly focused. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about that, due to physical logistics.
Sounds like you’ll either have to adjust the bass either mechanically using your stereo’s controls or try a different EQ program on your Mac. That sucks either way. If you’re willing to use Chrome there is a workaround.
Update:
I’ve largely solved the problem by simply turning the stereo speakers away from me and pointing them at the walls on either side of me. I’m set up in an unusually narrow room — I live in a pre-WW2 “townhouse” apartment, and my upstairs area is basically one very long (I don’t know how long; my tape measure is only 16 feet), but narrow, low-ceilinged room (width: 9 feet; ceiling, 6 feet 4 inches). Given the age of this place, I assume the walls are also plaster & lath rather than drywall, so they’re very sound-reflective. (I also assume that the large, rectangular seams in the ceiling are the remnants of past asbestos removal, but that’s beside the point.)
So, I think that part of the original problem was that, with the speakers pointing straight down the length of the room, I was turning the room into a bass resonating chamber. Low-frequency sound waves are very long, and I suspect they were “taking advantage” of the length of this room and were bouncing straight back and forth from this end to the other and back, to the point that the bass was just overwhelming.
By angling the speakers toward the side walls, I’m hearing the reflection from the walls in a more direct way (and, thankfully, the part of the room where the speakers are set up has walls that are not shared with the next apartment).
Glad to hear it! Are you still getting proper staging with the speakers placed that way? If reflections are the issue it may be worth trying to put a few egg cartons or anechoic style foam tiles along the walls, like the foam from inside Pelican cases. Put them in some inexpensive frames and call them modern art… 