(TV stations today have also dropped the hammer by requiring all material be normalized to -23 or -24 LUFS, depending on whether you’re in USA or EU.) Remember the days when you’d be watching a TV show, then a commercial would come on that was 120 dB louder than the show and it would drive you insane? YouTube drops the hammer on that nonsense by turning down any video whose “average volume” is louder than -14 LUFS. YouTube has a LUFS normalization system in place. Volume / Normalized: 100% / 58% (content loudness 4.8dB) Try making another 1080p video the usual way again, but then do this in addition to the previous settings when it’s time to export and see if it sounds better when uploaded to YouTube: There might be one more option… If your videos are 1080p, a common trick is to export them as 1440p to make YouTube give you a higher bitrate or a better codec, which includes audio. If the file sizes need to be even more conservative, then libopus is the ticket. There is also FLAC or ALAC for compressed lossless. If you have disk space and Internet bandwidth to spare, then pcm_s16le will produce the best sound at the expense of larger file sizes. If you choose libopus, the audio will be compressed and lose some detail, but it will be the least amount of loss among the lossy formats. To clarify, pcm_s16le means 16-bit WAV output, which would basically mean lossless quality. On the flip side, if your video is 1080p or lower resolution, then you’re getting one of YouTube’s lower bitrates along with AAC audio, and AAC is not exactly a strong performer on drums, particularly high-frequency stuff like cymbals. That’s pretty alarming that YouTube compression is messing up your sound that much.

Hmm, I was hoping that WMM compression was the biggest problem.

Shotcut youtube