Whats the best way to make YOUTUBE sound good from windows PC??

[BigAlMc]

Hey Beer,

 

Long time!

 

Not sure about 'best way' or even if there is a best way.

 

I would think that many of the usual ways of getting audio from windows pc to your DAC apply. USB connection, etc.

 

Never tried from PC to be honest so sorry but can't answer directly. Will offer my own approach and a few thoughts in case it helps.

 

We have an Apple TV streamer that connects to the TV via HDMI and supports YouTube. I bought one of the following:

 

Neoteck Audio Extractor with HDMI Splitter 4K HDMI to Optical SPDIF Toslink Converter

http://www.neoteck.cn/index.php/2017/02/08/ntk006/

 

Cost £21 and takes HDMI in, outputs HDMI and Toslink optical out. I connect that Optical to my DAC and bingo! Picture on screen and music via my system. 

 

Sound quality is surprisingly decent on some of the YouTube content. That said you get dodgy ones and changes on volume for next video can be startling!

 

Anyway. Point is and may or may not be relevant. If you have a smart TV or you can connect your laptop to your TV via HDMI. It might be possible to output Toslink optical audio from the TV to your DAC or Hifi. Most TVs have optical out intended for a soundbar or surround sound.

 

Be great to hear some thoughts on your actual question around the best way. But these work as a starting place and sound decent.

 

Hope you don't mind the slightly OT reply.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[BigAlMc]

I personally wouldn't get too distracted by upsampling as often you're dealing with a low quality lossy soundtrack and as @sandyk said it won't miraculously cure that.

 

I'd prioritize two things.

 

A. Being able to select the best soundtrack on each video.

 

B. Useability. By that I mean you don't need to faff around on each video to set the right settings. And your solution sees your Marantz and will play to it.

 

I'm assuming here you want to listen to the video's you're watching as opposed to rip the audio to your library.

 

Don't know JRiver so can't comment there. But sounds like your ideal solution is a media player that supports selectng the higher bitrate audio and playing it to the Marantz while showing the video on the PC monitor/screen. If JRiver doesn't pan out I'd explore the different media players as one of them might support this.

 

PS saw a thread on Roon forum asking them to support YouTube but no idea if they'll ever do it or not. Don't think you were a Roon user but just as background.

[BigAlMc]

Hi Beer,

 

I see this as there are three challenges here:

 

1. Selecting the hidden better quality soundtrack that Alec mentioned - the 529kbps one rather than the default 128kbps.
2. Sending that signal to your hifi system to play it.
3. Optimising the signal by upsampling or even decrapifying it to make the most of it.

I focused on 2 and bought a gizmo to split the audio out from the HDMI signal and send optical to my DAC. I was always aware that a £21 HDMI splitter might be generating a crap audio signal. In this hobby how could I not be aware. I power that 21 quid cheapo gizmo with an LPS-1 because I had one to hand. Again the irony of £300 PSU for £21 gadget was not lost on me!!

 

You on the other hand seem focused on 3. You understandably want to make the MOST out of that signal and basically rescue it to make it sound as good as you can.

 

This thread has got me thinking we're both wrong. We should be focused on 1. Software that lets you select the better soundtrack is surely the first priority. Once you have that better soundtrack then you need to worry about 2 (how to get it to your system). And only after solving both of those does it make sense to worry about 3 and trying to upsample/rescue that signal.

 

I chose convenience over sound quality. But the sound quality really wasn't that bad which is partly why I settled.

 

It might help if you explain your setup. Do you have a TV in the same room as the Marantz? If so then a dedicated player that supports YouTube might be quick win for getting YouTube more directly to your Hifi. e.g. an Amazon Fire, Apple TV etc. These are pretty affordable and come with the benefit they might increase your TV streaming options.

 

Or alternatively is the PC integral to what you are trying to do here. In which case it's probably a software solution that you need.

 

Sorry for rambling but I'm genuinely intrigued by your thread and am gonna play around with my own set up.

 

Cheers,

Alan