Youtube Is Making ASMR Sound Worse & How To Fix It (Patreon)

Some might already be aware of this and I personally found out this information from ASMR Shortbread's video, but Youtube has added a setting called 'stable volume' that is automatically turned on when you watch any video. What this setting does is it equalizes the volume of the video. So instead of hearing in my audios me be quieter when further away from the microphone and louder when I get in closer, that is taken away and it all sounds the same volume. It's also making everything sound much louder than it should which might not be great for relaxation and falling asleep too. Also by it raising quieter parts of the video it's also adding extra background noise that shouldn't be there, and compressing the audio quality making the audio overall just sound less clear. I've also seen complaints that the louder background noises are resulting in audio crackles and static that has affected some peoples tinnitus and overall just being bothersome.

I understand how it could be helpful to quieten videos that are suddenly very loud and could hurt your ears or jumpscare you, but from listening to my own videos with and without it on it's actually making everything equal but equally louder when turned on, and adds more background noise than there should be. I take time and care to purposefully make some lines, noises and SFX quieter than others, to move myself closer and further away from my microphone, and to edit out unwanted background noise. And this feature is undoing all of that work.

Sadly there is no 'turn off for every video' option. It is by default on and you have to manually turn it off every time you click on a new video. This may not affect most videos, but it affects ASMR videos a lot as different sounds having different volumes is intentional and can add to someone's ASMR 'tingles' or in my case making it feel more like you really are in a different location. There being no universal setting for all videos means if you have a playlist of ASMR you sleep too, turning off the setting will only turn it off for the first video and the next video in the playlist will still have the setting on and likely suddenly be louder and potentially wake you up.

Hopefully Youtube adds a button where you can just turn the setting off entirely for all videos. But for now you have to click on the cog icon on a video, and then the 'stable volume' should be right at the top. When the slider is red it's on, when it's grey it's off.