As they mature on your disk, the quality slowly increses. Although after a while, videos get overripe and eventually dissolve in a mess of macro blocks. That's why it's important to know when to move them to cold storage.
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Bit rot is the accepted term I believe.
That's why it's so important to always store your backup media inside your refrigerator for ISO certified cold storage.
I don't know where you're from, but for the Americans who are confused by the term cold storage, their talking about refrigeration.
Probably because youtube is using transcoding while streaming and serves a worse version while streaming for the sake of keeping the trasnmission uninterrupted
yt-dlp requests a specific format and downloads that in its entirety. When you use the YouTube web site, it dynamically adjusts based on your internet connection. If there's lag, then it'll drop you to a lower bitrate. So that's one possible explanation.
There's a little gear button on the YouTube page that lets you manually select the quality you want. If you specifically select e.g. 1080p then it won't drop you down, it'll just lag if your internet is too slow. I'm not 100% sure if that also applies to audio.
it's not happening 'after'. ytdlp is likely downloading a higher quality file than what the browser or app is receiving for streaming.
Yes of course!
Like fruits ripen. Some do so later, after being picked from the tree.
/s
What codec are you downloading? My internet is a joke, its slow and vids are always compressed in real-time to adapt to the connection speed. Downloading the video (audio) gives you the option to get the original or uncompressed audio stream, you can set yt-dlp to download at the best available quality, so that could be the reason.
I am using the default mp4 and webm file format to download the music.
Quick question, why do you choose mp4 rather than say opus? Just wondering because I can't often tell the difference on my subpar headphones. Do you choose high bitrate settings?
Edit: you mentioned the default, so I guess the bitrate falls somewhere in the middle for quality.
Turn off "Stable Volume" in Youtube's video settings to disable dynamic range compression.
This is a must if you listen to music on Youtube.
Volume and Dynamic Range are different things. One doesn't effect the other.
Stable Volume just uses a form of ReplayGain to adjust volume for each track so they don't swing so much.
It's not doing any dynamic range compression, like some Nighttime Listening mode.
Tell that to the GuitarTubers whose audio get squashed to oblivion.
I can literally hear pumping clear as day in response to loud moments. It absolutely is doing dynamic range compression.
Its so obvious that I realized I was logged out of my Youtube account after a browser update and had to disable it again.
But YT definetly fucks something up when stable volume is enabled. My non audiophile ass can notice it instantly even with podcasts. It sounds significantly worse.