richiefinger wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 6:25 am
As for your youtube playlist coming in at 24bit flac, ummm
They either come from a different source to YouTube or they are just up converting.
YouTubeMusic is the worst quality of all the streaming sites and definitely not going to be above 128mp3 equivalent.
When YouTube Music launched it was 128.
I don't think that is true now.
I have a family plan, and that sets everybody to their Premium level.
See
this recent review from PC Mag.
In terms of audio quality, the streamed music sounds good. Neither the YouTube Music app or the web version displays the audio-quality specifics, but a quick look at the service's Help page provides answers. Music tracks stream at Low, Normal, and High qualities, which carry 48Kbps AAC, 128Kbps AAC, and 256Kbps AAC bit rates, respectively. High quality is only available to Premium users.
YouTube absorbed their previous Google Play Music service.
The beta version of MM temporarily allowed you to download tracks from the Google servers.
I have a track from Google Play Music which I kept from when beta testing pre-release MediaMonkey.
Here is what that track
looks like.
As you say, the track may be tricked up by falsely upgrading it, but I doubt it.
The Internet is all over the place on this issue.
There are lots of people of people claiming that premium YTM sounds the real deal to them.
Unfortunately my hearing is not up to the task.
richiefinger wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 6:25 am
put some of your flac files into the "fakin' the funk" app and see what it says.
I went to do that, but my security monitoring s/w said not to go there, so I didn't.