Some YouTube users may soon come across a new feature that will help keep the volume of their videos at a more consistent level. After a Reddit user discovered a yet-to-be-announced setting titled “Stable volume,” YouTube has since confirmed the experiment is now in testing with global users.
As the name implies, “Stable Volume” is meant to even out the volume across YouTube videos, some of which may be louder than others. Demand for sound leveling is something other media providers have also offered for some time, from smart TVs to sound systems to media players like Roku, which has its own Automatic Volume Leveling feature that takes aim at loud commercials, for example.
YouTube didn’t announce the launch of the Stable Volume feature, but several people spotted it appearing in their app, including YouTube creator M. Brandon Lee, of the “This Is Tech Today” channel. In a tweet over the weekend, Lee speculated the feature “may be a normalizer and compressor that evens out the volume so you don’t have big jumps in volume in between videos and even parts of a video itself,” he remarked.
YouTube now has a feature called “Stable volume.”
I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I think it may be a normalizer and compressor that evens out the volume so you don’t have big jumps in volume between videos and even parts of a video itself.
May be problematic for music. pic.twitter.com/kh0IGoXmpe
— M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY (@thisistechtoday) July 15, 2023
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YouTube confirmed the creator’s guesses, noting that the feature was still considered a test for the time being.
“We are currently testing a new YouTube listening control feature that enables a more consistent sound for users when watching videos,” a YouTube spokesperson told TechCrunch. “The experiment is global and across mobile devices,” they added.
If you have access to the Stable Volume feature, it will appear in the video settings page in the YouTube app.
