How Important Is Audio?

[MJKlein]

Many times when I watch YouTube videos, I'm listening on my earbuds. What normally happens is that many of the bigger channels have a standard outro that they add on to the end of every production. But the audio levels don't match and sometimes the outtro can be extremely loud compared to the video. One channel in particular was so bad that I had to un-sub because I couldn't take it anymore. Every new video had this blasting outro that made me rip out my earbuds as I was walking down the street. There really isn't any excuse for that because every video editor has audio editing tools too. Plus YouTube will modify your audio to match the platform. So if there is a huge difference in volume between clips its because your overall level is below the limiter's threshold.

There is a site that all of us should be using: loudnesspenalty.com where we can upload our audio track and see what YouTube and other platforms will do to it. This site is mainly for musicians doing songs for streaming but YouTube is one of those sites that Loudness Penalty checks.

This all comes down to Mastering and making sure that the final level is clamped with a limiter so it doesn't go beyond a certain LUFS level, and also that the softer sections match up with the overall loudness. I think that most video content creators basically ignore audio. I have seen some really huge channels that have a staff of editors, totally screw up the audio.

How important is audio to you and how do you manage it?