In case you haven't noticed, most of the YouTube audio posts are in mono - just like your grandpa's single "Hi-Fi" speaker system. Surprisingly, users don't seem to question and complain much about this rude blast back to the past - are they deaf, or just "passive"?

However, I just ran across an interesting link on how to upload stereo files to YouTube. (Take a look under "More Info").

Now, all you guys can start posting stereo links on YouTube.

Yeah, it's amazing to hear stereo on YouTube. It feels like the experience is coming out of the screen rather than sitting there flatly.

This one's interesting because you can hear both standard quality and higher quality, and the poster gets a high-quality still image as well.

Wikipedia has some technical notes on the encoding requirements.

And here's the same video encoded in two ways to show the tradeoffs:

1. stereo music, blocky video
2. mono music, clearer video

Thanks David,

Interesting contrasts!

To me, the stereo audio makes the blocky video much more appealing. The stereo sound adds more (for me) than improving the video quality but keeping the sound mono. Clearly, I must be biased though, as logic tells me the visual cues in a movie must convey more information. Or, could it be that audio cues really are worth a thousand images?

Why not have both? Vimeo.com lets you post HD video with stereo audio. Lots of talented videographers and filmmakers there.