New Technique for Speeding Up Audio to 5X

By Winston Chen, 23 March, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I'm the founder and developer of Voice Dream Reader. I recently came across a piece of new technology that can take existing audio books and play them back at any speeds. Here're some samples: 

How does this compare to what you're using?

Thanks!

Winston.

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Comments

By DPinWI on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

This sort of thing is used all the time. I listen to podcasts, which are also human voices, at higher speed rates. In the supplied examples, the 3x was a little too clipped to be something I'd spend a lot of time listening to. In iCatcher, my podcatcher of choice, I use the highest settings and rrarely hear that sort of artifact issue.

By Larry Thacker Jr. on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

I use Audible at 3X all the time. This 3X sample seems faster than that. That said it doesn't seem to have the choppiness that the Audible app does.

By synthesizer101 on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

I don't know. The downcast's version of high speeds is highly fluent to my eyes, while the learning ally's one makes an annoying clicking sound. I think that over all, the text to speech scales way better than would any recording. Still, I find the 2x speed for audiobooks in the music app to make their reading more fluent.

By Winston Chen on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

iCatcher's maximum speed is 2x. So you should compare the 2x above with what you might with the maximum speed in iCatcher.

By Winston Chen on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

On the question of comprehension, do you find the 3x here more, less, or about the same? Would you like to hear 4x using this new technique?

By Jesse Anderson on Friday, April 5, 2013 - 23:07

I like the 2x and 3x speeds. Even the 2 and 3x speeds seem much faster than other apps that speed up audio. Downcast and Audible for example, their 2x seems much slower. The 4x speed seems a little fast, even for me, but I may get used to that as well. In addition to speeding up books, I'd LOVE to see the ability to subscribe to podcasts and listen to them at these high speeds. Again, I like Downcast, but it's a little slow. I'm used to listening faster on my Victor Reader Stream, but would love to have this faster speed on my phone.

By Cristobalm on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - 23:07

I had requested faster speeds than the max 2X in older versions of this app for a while. I am very appreciative of now being able to max out at 4X. I'm probably maxing out at 3.5X or 3.75 depending on what kind of leasurely reading I want to do and maybe 3X or 2.5X if I'm trying to learn or retain something for studying. Either way, no longer being limited to 2X is great. I don't think i could go beyond 4X and keep up, but I'm sure that there are some out there perhaps those who have had vision loss from the very beginning and have gotten used to consuming information at a much faster rate where 5X would be useful. to even have it as an option would be nice.
Downcast's playback speeds beyond 2X had been broken for a while, but thankfully with one of the most recent updates, it was fixed. Anything past 2X would be choppy and skip to the point where listening faster than 2X was impossible.
So Winston, how about an accessible podcasting app? If I could play podcasts at a faster rate than 3X, I'd make the switch. I and a lot of blind folks are big time podcast consumers. In fact, I've gotten to the point of preferring to consume whatever TV and radio shows I like this way. Download them at night and blast through super fast and without the commercials.

By riyu12345 (not verified) on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - 23:07

Hi. I am wondering where you get your radio and tv shows from?

I'd like to check them out.