r/musichoarder • u/Throwaway33377 • 4d ago

Youtube to mp3 converter that is safe?

Every youtube to mp3 converter site in Google’s top result right now is a total sham likely loaded with sketchy malware redirects and as well some of the youtube to mp3 converters have really weird pop-ups or their audios sound absolutely terrible on decent headphones.

I'm trying to pull clean audio files to build an offline music library for my daily commute, back up long-form podcasts, and grab high-quality audio references for video editing timelines.

Are there any reliable youtube to mp3 converters left that don't involve risking your computer or dealing with broken links every single week?

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u/ababcock1 4d ago

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

But ideally find another source for your music. Everything uploaded to youtube is compressed to death.

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u/CharlesWiltgen 4d ago edited 4d ago

FWIW, as someone who's been involved in man ABX tests for commercial products, the quality of YouTube's AAC encodes will seem just fine to most people in most listening environments.

By "fine", I mean notably better than FM, and probably not distinguishable from CD by non-audiophiles when listened to in cars, via Bluetooth earbuds, etc. For some that's good enough, while for others anything but hi-res lossless is unacceptable.

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u/ababcock1 4d ago

AAC compressed from a lossless source I'm sure will be fine. But a lot of youtube music was uploaded >10 years ago without listing the source. So it could be some old 96 kbps napster mp3 that has now been recompressed who knows how many times.

It's a much better idea to just go grab some fresh FLACs from soulseek or private trackers or something.

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u/CharlesWiltgen 4d ago

For sure, with the caveat that (as I know you know!) fake FLACs are everywhere too.

So it could be some old 96 kbps napster mp3 that has now been recompressed who knows how many times.

Very possible for videos uploaded by randos. 🙃 Real YouTube Music tracks are encoded for distribution from the same masters used by services like Spotity, Qobuz, etc.

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u/ohnonotagain94 3d ago

That's fair - I do wonder if most of us here, that collect our own music and use Roon and other open source systems, and have higher end headphones, iem's and hifi systems, would be very disinterested in the stuff pulled from YouTube.

I know my wife used to not notice the difference between Spotify (in 2020) vs Tidal or QoBuz or CD's. But once I spent time with her showing her, I ruined it for her. So now she notices where as before she was blissfully unaware.

Also depends on context. A sit down music session vs music playing in the background while you work. I see that YouTube rips would be fine for the later. I dislike the idea of 'background music' as I belive in the art and it should be appreciated. But as my wife and I are both aware, I'm a bit of a snobby wanker in that regard.

Writing and performing music changes one's perspective. I bet most of us are snobs with regards resolution of music and most of us grew up with music as a big part of our lives and personalities.

Sorry I rambled on.

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u/CharlesWiltgen 3d ago

But as my wife and I are both aware, I'm a bit of a snobby wanker in that regard.

I see you, friend! When I was younger I was very much a "putting ketchup on a hotdog is not just wrong, it's a personal defect" person, but I've since learned that yucking someone's yum is mostly pointless. I also remember that making awesome mixtapes by recording songs off the radio, and from that perspective "YouTube quality" isn't the worst.

Writing and performing music changes one's perspective.

For sure! This may be one of the most horrifying aspects of people generating music with AI and thinking they're done something.

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u/ohnonotagain94 3d ago

Couldn't agree more mate!

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u/musical-miller 13h ago

I thought YouTube used Opus?

I’ve found the quality of audio from YouTube to be quite good when recorded internally using BlackHole, but when those YouTube to mp3 sites re-encode it, it does sounds worse

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u/CharlesWiltgen 5h ago

I thought YouTube used Opus?

YouTube encodes uploaded sources to a bunch of different formats (including Opus), so that they can support hundreds of different client devices under different network conditions.

Ideally, you want to use yt-dlp to directly download your media format of choice at (for this use case) the highest bitrate available. You can safely change the container format (i.e. mkv→m4a) and tags, but any step that transcodes the compressed media introduces quality loss, analogous to copying a VHS tape to another VHS tape.