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VocaVerse Network

I
inactive
What you're experiencing is loudness normalization. The idea is to ensure that videos on YouTube have more-or-less the same maximum playback level.

You can right click on the video and select "Stats for nerds" to see the loudness penalty applied to your track.

In order to avoid a penalty you need to mastering using LUFS. YouTube apparently wants audio to be at -14 LUFS, and anything above will be turned down. I haven't used this plugin, but the Youlean Loudness Meter is free and even has a preset for YouTube. (I personally use Limiter 6 from TDR, but its not free, and it's more than just a meter.)

Unfortunately, if your off-vocal track is pre-mixed, then the levels may already be too high and there's not much you can do except turn down the volume of your track, which is exactly what YouTube is doing. LUFS are relatively new, so many older tracks will suffer from excess levels—a leftover from the loudness wars.

(Interestingly, I just learned today that this loudness normalization seems to only be applied when watching on YouTube. Videos embedded on websites such as VocaVerse will have the loudness normalization turned off. Or at least it seems that way...)
peaches2217
peaches2217
Hmm... it makes sense, but it's still frustrating. Thank you for the explanation!
I
inactive
One other thing that I've also started doing is uploading videos with the sound in FLAC format. Because FLAC is lossless, it survives YouTube's audio transcoder with minimal compression goofiness.