What sounds better, mastering for YouTube or SoundCloud?

[Xcastmusic]

I've compared dubstep tracks on both YouTube and SoundCloud and found out that tracks mastered for YouTube have a wider dynamic range. I'm more convinced to publish tracks only to YouTube. I would like to know what everyone's opinions are on the matter.

[digitalgeist]

Depends on how dynamic a song is to begin with, and where the original LUFS value is. They both auto-adjust whatever is fed to them to -13LUFS so if the track isn't mastered to that it'll get squashed.

[Tarekith]

Sound cloud doesn't do any sort of volume normalization like YouTube, iTunes, etc actually.

What it does do is convert your songs to 128kbps MP3 using a rather poor sounding algorithm, so any quality loss is down to that. YouTube and most of the other online services convert your audio to AAC when a bandlimited version is required, which tends to be a much better sounding version of data compression compared to MP3 at the same bit rates.

I can understand people wanting to use Soundcloud for the social aspects, but the sound quality is atrocious IMO. Personally, I get WAY more people listening and commenting on YouTube, so as long as you're ok with their terms of service, I find it's a much better platform for showcasing your music. Just my $.02 though.