When I use an FFT to view the spectrogram on YouTube music videos, it is very obvious that YouTube applies a lowpass filter at 16kHz on <i>all</i> videos (true since 2023 at least).<p>While this does retain the majority of useful information, it explains why the youtube version of your song feels just a little more 'lifeless' than the high quality version you have elsewhere.<p>The original recording contains high frequency detail that got lost. Your human body uses that high frequency detail to orient itself in space with respect to sound sources (like reverb, reflections, or ambient sounds).<p>It is interesting from a data storage point of view because this could result in massive savings. Consider audio is recorded at 44.1khz or 48kHz but is actually stored at 32kHz. They have effectively saved 25% in audio file storage at marginal customer experience.