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People Who Speed-Listen to Podcasts

197 points by Osiris30 9y ago

mattlondon 9y ago
I love 2x playback for videos - I like to catch up on various work internal meeting recordsings etc at double-speed. I wish netflix would add 2x to its shows! It takes a bit of effort but isn't so hard to get used to. Love it.
- nrhodes 9y ago
  The Video Speed Controller Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...) allows you to speed up Netflix or any video that uses HTML 5 for playback.
  - ivan_ah 9y ago
    This ^ is worth its weight in gold. The ability to adjust speed in increments of 0.1 is really good. You can watch a lecture at 1.7x 1.8x or if the speaker is slow, then up to 2.3x and more... On the topic of 2.3x video watching, I've observed that "question periods" after lectures are very difficult to watch at 2x speed. It seems the pace of "lecture speech" is deliberately slower for most prepared speeches, but when it comes to live question-answer periods rates jumps up. Has anyone else noticed this?
- deleted 9y ago
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- vanattab 9y ago
  I find 2x great for getting more information from non fiction lectures and the like but terrible for movies/novels. You lose a lot of the emotion and it just sounds odd and "chipmunk" like.
pawelwentpawel 9y ago
I speed-listen to lectures, usually 2x. It not only allows me to eat more information within a limited time frame but also keeps me much more focused than listening to them at a normal speed.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  There's a blind guy in my office building and I sometimes hear his iPhone doing voiceover in the hallway. If I didn't know better I'd have a hard time believing there are even words in it.
ilamont 9y ago
A few years back I worked on a website that was very ADA compliant. Part of the development involved testing for different use cases, including users who have low vision. Some of the software for this audience reads through alt and body text at what sounds like 4x or 5x the speed. It was practically unintelligible to my untrained ears, but one colleague who uses screen readers every day had no problem with it.
everling 9y ago
Relevant Portlandia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA
toephu2 9y ago
Slow down guys...learn to enjoy life at normal speed, seriously, you don't need to act like you're in the rat race 24/7.
- mrob 9y ago
  In most podcasts the value is in the information, not the timing. 2x speed is more enjoyable (or maybe a relaxing 1.5x speed if you don't feel like concentrating) because there's less boring waiting involved.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    Depends on the podcast honestly. If it's a comedy podcast, listening at 2x defeats the point. Even if it's a purely educational podcast or audiobook, any form of pacing or diction is lost at 2x, which, ironically, makes the story boring as well imo.
    - amputect 9y ago
      My two favorite podcasts are Sawbones and Welcome to Night Vale. I don't, like, personally care if people listen to them at high speed. It doesn't bug me and I don't judge them for it. My personal experience (descriptive, not prescriptive) follows: Sawbones is an edu-comedy podcast about medical history, and I tried listening to it faster and just didn't enjoy it as much. I really enjoy the comedic timing and interplay between the hosts, and it's already information rich enough that I feel fine listening to it at normal speed is fine. One of the things I really like about WtNV is the almost menacing, deliberate pacing of the narrator. His speech is so perfectly even, regardless of the content, that it's almost hypnotic. I tried that at 1.25x and it felt off, but again it's a personal preference thing.
  - sevensor 9y ago
    Personally, I find that if I let my mind wander a little bit while listening to programming podcasts, it makes connections to my work all by itself. I worry that if I sped up, I'd miss those. Also, since my listening time is also when I'm doing household chores, I need to be able to relax my attention on the podcast without losing the thread.
furyofantares 9y ago
I speed listen to podcasts (and audiobooks and speed watch lectures) for an entirely different reason: I am able to maintain attention on the material. I am sure I get less out of it than someone who is able to pay attention at 1x, but I get nothing out of 1x and never got anything but frustration out of lectures in school, so speed listening opened up a whole new world for me.
- trisimix 9y ago
  Holy crap this might actually help me.
  - anotheryou 9y ago
    enjoy :) it really feels good to pump interesting thoughts in at the speed limit of perception and recognition :)
- rconti 9y ago
  I was studying for a cert and needed to review some material faster so I started doing 1.5x and 1.7x up to 2x. What's amazing is how quickly you adapt. The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER, even at 2x, and when you slow down to 1.5x it seems positively glacial. But you're right, you need to focus. It leaves a lot less time for letting your mind wander. You don't get anything for free. I sometimes watch NFL condensed games and they cut out all the non-play activity so you can watch a game in 40 mins-- which sounds great, but you realize it's 40 mins of intense focus if you want to follow what's going on.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - fedups 9y ago
    > The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER No kidding. Overcast has a "Smartspeed" feature that cuts out these pauses. The counter on my app says it's saved me 195 hours to date.
jbgreer 9y ago
Related: I speed-watch all non-music videos at least at 1.25x or 1.5x, sometimes 2x. I wonder how many people select tech videos based on length? Surely YouTube / Vimeo etc. has studied this? I wish there was a search option that let me filter content based on length.
- ovrdrv3 9y ago
  Youtube sort of has a filter available - Short (under 4 mins) or Long (Over 20 mins)
kentosi 9y ago
Not just podcasts, I also do this with YouTube when someone talks really slow or if it's an instructional video I just want to get the information out of. Having hotkeys ">" and "<" also help control the speed when needed.
- erikb 9y ago
  Yeah instructional videos are awesome on 1.25 (or 1.5 if the English is good). And you can still slow down and even pause if something is harder to understand. I wish this would've been possible already when I went to school. How many hours could've been saved...
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I just have couple of bookmarklets: javascript:document.getElementsByTagName(%22video%22)%5B0%5D.playbackRate=2.5 Interestingly some browser start to clip audio at certain speeds. Also, heavy accents become difficult to listen at higher speeds. p.s. comma and dot (got me confused with ><) on youtube skips video frame by frame.
malydok 9y ago
Speed aside, I can't imagine listening to any attention-demanding podcast for more than 3 hours. Apart from straight up brain strain it wouldn't result in a lot of knowledge retention.
crispyambulance 9y ago
I find 1.5x to be OK, but 2x always ends up sounding too choppy and abrupt. It is clear that the playback software shifts the pitch downward so it matches the 1x pitch, but there's still some "artifacts" that show up when you go beyond 1.5x. Is there a precise word for this kind of distortion? besides "choppy"? Also, I wonder how far you could get in time compression by merely removing spaces between words without actually compressing the words?
- zepn 9y ago
  As for your final point, it's an optional feature but the Pocket Casts app records exactly that, alongside the amount of time spent listening and the time spent listening to speed-adjusted podcasts.
- danjc 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_time_stretching_and_pitch_scaling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_time_stretching_and_pi...
- dec0dedab0de 9y ago
  I wonder how far you could get in time compression by merely removing spaces between words without actually compressing the words? That is interesting, but a good speaker uses spacing to better convey their message. In order for it to work, it would have to somehow take into account rhythm. Perhaps just cutting longer spaces instead of spaces between words. Maybe even starting with the creator, or users tagging unnecessary bits such as coughing, or reaching for a drink.
  - Osmium 9y ago
    It's also the case that often there aren't spaces between words. One of the surprising things when you first start doing audio analysis is that the pauses between words that you perceive aren't actually there in reality -- which makes them a lot more difficult to 'remove' algorithmically.
    - 9y ago
bearcobra 9y ago
I recently changed my Pocket Casts settings to trim silence and play at 1.8x for most of my subscriptions. The only exceptions are shows that do a lot of audio production like Reply All, RadioLab and The Adventure Zone. I've even found myself adjusting to the faster speed on comedic podcasts, which has been the most surprising to me.
ec109685 9y ago
> He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day, and listened at normal speed until he came upon the Movies by Minutes series of podcasts, which analyzes iconic movies minute by minute. Interesting job that provides enough down time to listen to podcasts at faster than normal speed 8 hours a day.
- MartinCron 9y ago
  Or a profoundly uninteresting job.
  - ThePadawan 9y ago
    Or a job with very high requirements on response time, but very low probability of problems, such as security guard, emergency server technician, night shift at a pharmacy or hotel front desk.
- camiller 9y ago
  First thing that comes to mind for me is desk clerk at a u-store-it facility. Lot of those places try to hire students because the student can study most of the time and deal with the occasional customer. You could conceivably have whole days without having to interact with a customer. I'm sure there are other jobs that are like that.
- hsod 9y ago
  Truck driver?
- joshvm 9y ago
  His job is mentioned in the sentence before this: > Take 34-year-old Jason Strickland, who works for a land surveyor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day ...
himom 9y ago
I speed listened to the Stanford iOS course. Some lecturers just talk too slowly, pause too often or speak with low information density.
camiller 9y ago
On the rare occasion that I can just sit and listen I'll use anywhere from 1.7x-2.2x. More commonly when I'm driving I rarely got above 1.2x. I just can't retain anything if I go faster while driving. I hadn't heard of the silence skipping feature but just checked and my player of choice (Podcast Addict) has it. Just turned it on so I'll see how that goes.
- infogulch 9y ago
  1.3x on a new podcast is about my limit. But the more I listen to a specific podcast and the more I get used to the hosts voices the faster I can speed it up. E.g. I've listened to ATP for a couple years now and I'm up to 2.3-2.5x now. I can barely hit 3x and still comprehend, but I really have to strain to understand, which is a bad idea since I mostly listen while driving. When I first started listening to podcasts in general and played around with the multiplier even 2x sounded like completely incomprehensible gibberish to me. The strangeness of super speed becomes apparent again when it starts autoplaying when someone else can hear. Their confused look is kinda funny though haha.
- isostatic 9y ago
  How badly is your driving skill effected when you listen to a podcast? I won't listen to audio books in the car because it takes concentration away from what I should be doing (safely operating a mechanical killing machine at 70mph)
  - petercooper 9y ago
    I can't speak for camiller, but I'd say it improves my driving. It engages a totally different part of the brain, and listening to spoken audio stops my mind from wandering and daydreaming by chatting to itself. For similar reasons, I listen to audio books while going to sleep (obviously, the physical and visual stimuli while driving ensure I don't fall asleep then ;-)).
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    I've listened to audio books in my car for years now, and the worst thing that happens is that I'll fail to listen to the audio for a while if anything important happens while driving. It has never, ever happened the other way.
otterpro 9y ago
I watch/listen at 1.25x-1.5x for some Vlogs and Youtube videos because the pacing is just too slow. A lot of Youtubers and Podcasters just drone on and on, or speak at a very slow pace, that I just lose interest. When pacing is done right, its actually fun to watch/listen to, and there is always something interesting, and I find it enjoyable to watch at 1x. The scene/topic/point/illustrations switch quickly to the next one, and the story moves forward without wasting precious time. One example of good pacing is Casey Neistat's vlog. Unfortunately, most Youtubers just don't.
- nimz 9y ago
  Veteran podcast hosts speak relatively slowly, so that it allows for the widest range of listening speed comfort levels amongst their listeners. People can then use their podcast player to customize how fast they like to listen. This is an easy way to tell apart the experienced and inexperienced podcasts.
pwinnski 9y ago
One of my siblings is quoted in this article, and most people in his life are annoyed both at how much time he spends listening to podcasts (even at hyper-speed) and how much he talks about them. I don't have a problem with listening quickly, it's the very long list of podcasts that suggests misguided focus.
- brandon272 9y ago
  It didn't occur to me that this could devolve into borderline dysfunctional behavior, but it does make sense. I think my first instinct when reading the article was that these folks are lucky to be consuming large amounts of podcast content.
  - cabaalis 9y ago
    I had the exact opposite reaction; I was wondering how in the world they could be functional with that amount of noise going into their minds. To each his own, of course, but I cannot fathom how they could possibly be consuming that amount of spoken word and still focusing on tasks at hand.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Well, you can't. They're either giving their work or the podcasts short shrift.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Not really a matter of luck...
- JoblessWonder 9y ago
  Yeah... Sounds like hoarding tendencies.
- Mz 9y ago
  Maybe it is his relationships that are dysfunctional, not his interest in podcasts. When I was involved in online gifted parenting groups, it was common to see smart kids "obsessed" with something that worked well for them. In my family, the dysfunctional behavior was resolved by helping my son find ways to genuinely get his needs met so he wasn't intellectually starving anymore. I also helped him find outlets foir his interests. The example I always gave him was that there was nothing wrong with liking debate, but go join a debate club instead if picking arguments with your mom every day. He never joined a debate club, but he did learn to find socially acceptable outlets and stopped making me apoplectic. I will add that gifted kids who were "obsessed" with a particular thing were often twice exceptional. They were gifted and also had some kind of handicap. Their obsession was something that adequately met their intellectual needs after years of starving because it somehow was both sufficiently information dense and delivered the information in a way that worked well for them. Someone who speed listens to podcasts constantly sounds to me like someone seeking a density of information in a format that works for them.
deleted 9y ago
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xutopia 9y ago
I speed up only to 1.25X or not at all. I find there is a sweet spot between listening faster and actually taking in what is being said. I used to do 2x but found myself forgetting the contents rather than remembering like I normally would.
thefifthsetpin 9y ago
I remember the first time I heard the intro music to the fivethirtyeight politics podcast at 1x speed. Had a completely different feel from what I had grown accustomed to.
Unbeliever69 9y ago
I never used to do this when I was young, but now that I'm getting older a sense of haste has crept into my life. I speed listen to podcasts, YouTube (non-music videos) and educational videos (such as technology learning modules on Eggheadio, Udemy etc.). It took me some time to adapt to this style of learning, but now, I wouldn't do it any other way. It makes me feel like I'm packing more into my day and as you get older, this is a comforting thing.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  I wonder if it's an age thing (seems counter to my intuition) or more of a zeitgeist, sign of the times type of thing. The world (especially the digital/knowledge world) is faster these days.
  - losteric 9y ago
    I believe the need for constant stimulation reflects today's world, while the desire to focus on productive subjects tends to come with maturity (not age). Personally, I think we're over-indexing on knowledge acquisition while underemphasizing taking action.
- lbotos 9y ago
  I'm "young" and I love 2x on youtube and such, not to get "more" but it actually gives me more time to reflect on the content. If I can listen at a pace I'm comfortable, usually when the video ends I can spend that extra time or so thinking about the concepts presented, not just moving on. The fact that it helps both of us to achieve different ends is pretty interesting.
scottlegrand2 9y ago
I watch deep learning course videos at 2-3x depending on the speaker's cadence.
hateful 9y ago
I started doing this with youtube science channels, especially after PBS Spacetime changed to that new guy.
legitster 9y ago
I have a co-worker who does this emphatically. He's the type where everything must be lifehacked to death. I get that it's a great way to speed through content quickly, but I've noticed that he has no way to discern quality anymore. In fact, he will avoid well produced, quality podcasts because they move too quickly and include sound effects and music. So yeah, I get it. But it seems to encourage the wrong sort of content - long, windy, with no effort made into presentation or editing.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  That must be me. I hate long winded, sound effected podcasts. It's just fluff to mask average content. Compare a16z with Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman (gosh even that name sucks). a16z has no ads, no sound effects, no blabber, but absolutely excellent content. Masters of Scale tho move slowly, keep repeating same things and feels like it's targeting children, way more edited. Edit: maybe it's just the format that makes it interesting. Google Cloud Podcast, Good Day Sir, Software Engineering Daily - all have conversational format, almost a debate.
  - Hextinium 9y ago
    I completely agree with the fluff in the sound effects and re-explaining. I used to be able to listen to NPR for hours but after listening to conversational podcasts I can't listen anymore to NPR. It's just too slow and the format bores me.
  - legitster 9y ago
    Must be a difference in taste. If the podcast only consists of back and forth conversation, I check out or look for a transcript (since I can read faster than the fastest speed listener). An episode of 99% Invisible though... I want to slow down and enjoy like a fine wine.
    - dzhiurgis 9y ago
      English not a native tongue, so listening is faster to me. Plus gives eyes a rest. But how does reading transcript different from normal text? p.s. I do like 99% Invisible, my most recent find.
eco 9y ago
One odd thing I found while listening to conversational comedy podcasts at 1.5x was that I found them to be funnier. I believe it's because if the pause before someone says something very clever is short it makes it even more impressive (and funny) that they thought of it.
eco 9y ago
For audiobooks I tend to start the book off at 1x for the first few hours because it's hard to follow while they are establishing characters and environment when you speed it up. Once I have a feel for those I gradually speed up to 1.4-1.7x (depending on the narrator).
desireco42 9y ago
I used to listen to x1.2-1.4, I don't do this anymore. I just mark them all read and listen to what I really am interested in. I do have more then... well around 80+... Anyhow, I wanted to share an anecdote, I am listening to 'Note to Self' and host is sharing her feelings and concerns and fears... And I am thinking, this lady is so nervous and jumpy and her friends too. So next time when I was opening an app, I am thinking, do I really want to listen to this nervous lady telling me about how to handle social media... then it dawns me that she just sounds nervous because I've been listening on 1.4x and everyone will sound nervous if they talk about their feeling on speed. So there...
solomatov 9y ago
I usually listen to audibooks at 2x speeds and lectures on at least 1.5x speed. It was hard to get used to first, but after a couple of months of practice, I think, I have good comprehension at these speeds. I wasn't able to increase speed though.
0xCMP 9y ago
I listen to tons of podcasts at faster speeds, but rarely beyond 2x. It really does feel like people are talking so slowly sometimes. I often do it so I don't get bored, wander off in my mind, and miss a huge part of the podcast. I still wander off, but it's far less and it helps getting through the backlog. I make sure to keep the list to a minimum though. Sounds like these guys are listening to way too much.
timthelion 9y ago
It seems to me that this is really a matter of condensing low density fluff. I've read 1/2 page papers on computer science that took me days to get through. The problem wasn't my reading speed.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Subject 'density' isn't something that can be just ramped up and down at will. Not everything can be conveyed at the same level of 'density' as those 1/2 page computer science papers you are referencing. You can think of it like compression in computer science; not every file is equally compressable.
mavhc 9y ago
I listen to podcasts at 1.70x currently with Annetta, and talk TV shows at 1.3x with xbmc or mxplayer
Dowwie 9y ago
Podcasts aren't just about content. That's part of why they're so great. Speed through an audio book but not a podcast!
jccalhoun 9y ago
I find that if I listen to podcasts at faster speeds I can get them but it requires I pay more attention to them. However, I am usually listening to a podcast and doing something else at the same time (like posting on hackernews). I find that the moderate pace of podcasts means I can drift my attention back and forth between the visual stimuli and auditory stimuli more easily. (maybe I could learn to do it with podcasts playing more quickly but I don't think I listen to enough podcasts to do that)
janwh 9y ago
I do understand why people would want to speed up their podcasts backlogs—I'm currently about 50% in, working my way through >500 hours of 5by5's Back To Work with Merlin Mann. I've tried speeding that up but one thing in particular causes me to stick with 1.1x at max: it's the connection with the hosts. It's just information (both useful and less so) condensed to be hastily consumed but it discards the dedication the hosts have put into it. Playing off of each other. The inside jokes, the subtle differences in tone and timing. Maybe I'm just not as good in processing such social interactions at a faster pace than real-time. But I love "sharing a laugh" as if it's happening right now. That feeling completely goes away when the audio is sped up.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Humor is a trick to help making information stick in your head. Not a new trick; advertising uses that trick all the time. There's no way that with speed listening or reading everything sticks equally as listening or reading a 1.0x speed multiplier. It may feel like you got more done, but in reality you did not. You're essentially fooling yourself, feeling like you accomplished more than you did. I do the same, but with movies/series. I "watch" them on a second screen without being all the time focused to it. Except if its a really good movie/serie. But if it isn't a good one, why watch it in the first place?
  - burkaman 9y ago
    Do you have any reason to believe this besides intuition? Anecdotally you'll find lots of people who say they retain a lot more at 2x speed than 1x, including me. Just look around this thread. Here's one study on this I found with a quick search: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-015-0841-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-015-0841-2 My own intuition tells me that everyone probably has a maximum (and maybe minimum) speed that they're comfortable with, and there's no reason to assume that a podcast host's preferred speaking rate is the same as an audience member's preferred listening rate. Speeding up your primary focus is not at all comparable to consuming something as a secondary focus. I agree that "watching" something in the background is terrible for comprehension and retention.
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
Speed listening seems like a win win but it's not if you are trying to learn. One of the rules of learning is that you must pay attention to what you are learning something that's hard to do with speed listening. If you just want to be entertained then I can see its benefits.
- hrktb 9y ago
  Perhaps think of listening as a direct equivalent to reading. People who focus enough will read a book at the right speed their brain can best process the information. But that speed is not the same for everyone, some people will go through a book twice as fast as others while extracting the same amont of learnings, and we won’t tell them they read at the wrong speed. If it’s true for books, why would it be different for audio contents ? There’s really no special rule that makes 1x playback a golden speed, especialy considering some podcaster speak faster in person than when they record for instance. Or the otherway round, podcats like ATP have the silences auto-trimmed to some extent making it denser than when they record. To each their speed.
mihau 9y ago
Is it only me or does anyone also feel like focusing on podcast "speed-listening" is waay easier than reading an article ? no distractions, no ads, no external links == no million tabs open, ->> you cannot easily scroll and tldr stuff <<-
- anotheryou 9y ago
  use pocket (and on android: ivona tts :) )
cerealbad 9y ago
2x speed often gives you better than 50% content retention. speed consumers are doing their own version of manual audio search, by unconsciously skipping over non-information and slowing down or repeating perceived relevant noise (or just toggling on/off focused attention). a more aggressive version of this is actually skipping 15-20 minute chunks of audio at a time and trying to pick up contextual clues about the preceding chunks to verify if they are worth listening. the greedy approach often pays off here if you are just looking for one or two specific portions in a giant pile of noise. you might end up doing 10 skips and listening to 8-15 minutes of 90 minutes of content. information addiction leads to a sensation of impending doom. the knowledge you would like to access and understand is spreading like a dark cloud and your global-time is counting down. my solution was to read the ~15 core books and retain their surface sensation. the rest is now processing and categorizing "new" information, pattern matching categories and bias detection to remove false positives.
rcarmo 9y ago
I'm steadily in the Overcast 1.7x+ camp. The audio processing is nothing short of phenomenal (if a drain on battery on my iPhone 6), and over time, I've adjusted to the point where the speed seems natural and I can spare enough CPU cycles to steer me through my commute. Other commenters' points that it is also a sort of focus enhancer also ring true to me--I have arrived at the office with nearly 100% retention of what a specific recording was about, especially since I tend to listen to technical podcasts like TWIML[1] (which focuses on stuff I do at work), and I get nothing but value from being able to listen to two podcasts during my one-hour commutes. Softer stuff like Merlin Mann, Gruber, etc. I will either navigate with the chapter guide or making liberal use of the skip buttons. I seldom (if ever) listen to any kind of podcast at normal speed, except for some language courses. Even then, I tend to slow down only for languages like Mandarin or Hebrew (which I'm less acquainted with). Spanish, French, etc. (which I know from childhood) tend to be drawn out enough that I can even speed up a little :) [1]: https://twimlai.com/ https://twimlai.com/
tw1010 9y ago
Isn't it a bit strange that what some these people are listening to is not particularly educational, but is rather entertainment? Speed listening a show which deconstructs movies frame by frame, that's kind of silly. For what reason? Definitely not for the entertainment value. (Or not completely.) FOMO, perhaps. A need to be able to keep up with the conversation at work and with friends, possibly. I'm just curious what's going on in the backs of these peoples minds, because it seems incredibly irrational. I'll admit that even I have had periods in my life when I have done this. Some flavour of addiction and a habit of getting things in a very short time-span is definitely part of it. But I'm not even sure I am fully aware of all the pieces of the psychological puzzle which would explain it.
buryat 9y ago
One thing you notice after speed-listening is how slow humans speak in real life
- cyberferret 9y ago
  The ironic thing (for me) is that I actually tend to speak too fast in real life. People are always asking me to slow down or repeat myself. I have to force myself to talk slowly. Yet, I cannot listen to podcasts on anything more than 1x speed. Must be a processing issue somewhere in my brain that causes this disconnect...
anotheryou 9y ago
I have to speed-listen, not to drift off when things are too slow. Podcasts, unlike good movies, often lack details to focus on when the plot is slow. Any good android and windows player recommendations? I can recommend: windows: windows media player (surprisingly good, once you found the playback speed menu) android: antennapod (sadly you can only cycle through speeds one way, which is really annoying). But it has the benefit of supporting chapters, subscriptions, auto-downloading and removing files etc.
mrlyc 9y ago
This sounds great! I have 680 GB of podcasts recorded at 128 kbps which equates to 1.35 years of constant listening. I could definitely listen at a higher speed while doing housework, gardening or washing the dishes. I'd be concerned about doing it while driving, though, as that requires (for me, at least) a lot of concentration.
fsiefken 9y ago
Some podcasts provide transcripts, I find them much faster to read then to listen to. Also being selective at what podcasts and episodes you listen to helps. Speed reading selective long reads (previously saved with DevonThink or Pocket) or speed listening to them in the dark is what I do.
JoshMnem 9y ago
I listen to Udemy courses and YouTube videos at 1.5x to 2x speed, depending on the speed of the talking. You can improve the listening comprehension with practice.
cyberferret 9y ago
I've tried it many times, but I just cannot consume podcasts at anything more than 1x speed. Any more, and I begin to understand how someone on the autism spectrum might feel in a normal social situation. I too went through a phase of getting addicted to podcasts and subscribing to almost every one that people recommended to me. But then I realised that I simply could not listen to them all within my allotted 'listening time' - which is usually during a 1hr walk in the mornings. So now I simply don't bother trying to keep up with listening to consecutive episodes, no matter how much I enjoy the podcast. I just go to my list of waiting episodes as I walk out my front gate, and hit 'play'. If it finishes during my walk, I start another random one from the list. If I return home before it finishes, I hit 'stop' and rarely go back to it unless it was particularly informative. I just treat my podcast list as a virtual sock drawer that I can reach in and grab anything out of without looking. I no longer live with the FOMO anxiety that I might miss a brilliant episode somewhere. I have too many other important things to do in my day.
- jldugger 9y ago
  I don't know if you're actually looking for advise here, but my recommendation is that you start off slow. 1.05x is virtually indistinguishable. Every month or two a rampup of .1x is equally indistinguishable, although there's a plateau somewhere. I should probably try bumping it up another .1x myself, now that I think about this.
  - andai 9y ago
    Can confirm. Even in a single session I like to slowly increase the speed. You get used to each one after a few minutes, and eventually you will turn it back to 1x and be shocked by how slow it sounds!
  - mmerlin 9y ago
    Did exactly that and found 1.2 to 1.25 is best depending on the voice pitch and cadence
- loeg 9y ago
  I do the next tick above 1x in Overcast -- 1.1x or so.
joshschreuder 9y ago
If you haven't tried it yet, have a go at playing back videos you watch at 1.1x. Over the space of a 50 minute TV show or more, saving 10% of your time is pretty useful. I don't think I've run into anything where I have been distracted by 1.1x, besides theme songs to shows I am familiar with which obviously don't sound like what you expect. It's basically unnoticeable.
RmDen 9y ago
It depends on the podcast.. something like twit, Joe Rogan, motley fool, stuff you should know, Jocko podcast I listen to at 2x since some of those are 2-3 hours and I don't lose anything at that speed(At least I believe I don't). Hardcore history I do at 1x... everything else is at 1.5
alphaalpha101 9y ago
I really hate podcasts. I can't stand listening to unfunny people with bad microphones taking 15x as long to get information across because they insist on starting every episode with a bunch of discussion about their boring lives, followed by various tweets people have sent them. Then they get distracted constantly throughout the podcast. It's just infuriating. What podcasts do people recommend? Because I'm surely not listening to the best ones.
brianbreslin 9y ago
I listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x. When I hear them now at regular speed, the hosts voices sound strange to me. Even more strange is when I listen to my friends' podcasts at 1.5x when I know their voice in normal speed. I would like to try 1.75x, but none of the common podcast or audiobook apps have that fine grained adjustment. 2x is too fast for me.
- froindt 9y ago
  I've found PocketCasts (on Android, not sure of iOS) to be my favorite app. It allows 0.1x resolution. It won't get you 1.75, but 1.7 or 1.8 will be nearly identical.
zzz95 9y ago
This is very surprising, as I often end up constantly rewinding and re-listening. Most of the time my mind wanders off to contemplate the repercussions of what I am listening to and sometimes I just want to take time to process. Is this normal or am I too slow? Are people binge listening to really lightweight podcasts or is it something else!
jldugger 9y ago
> In fact, according to behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, because recordings played at higher speeds are at a higher pitch, they are actually easier to hear. Uh... that's not how modern speedup works. Here's a brief rundown: 1. break the audio up into very small windows 2. FFT audio in a window from time domain to frequency domain 3. FFT the audio back from frequency to time domain, with an even smaller window (or larger, if you want to slow playback down). The frequencies resulting are the same, but shorter in duration. Obviously there's some sampling bias that can creep in, but these algorithms are generally pitch-stable.
- gleenn 9y ago
  For anyone interested in a simple implementation of FFT, I found this neat little example which was very grokkable if you speak Java: https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/97data/FFT.java.html https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/97data/FFT.java.html
  - tzs 9y ago
    For those who just want to play around with Fourier transforms, it is worth noting that computers are fast enough nowadays that you can often get away with a slow Fourier transform instead of a fast Fourier transform. The former is O(N^2) as opposed to O(N log N), but is also much easier to understand. To wit, in C, here is a function that takes a pointer to an input array of complex numbers, and output array of complex numbers, and a count of how many numbers are in the input, and does a discrete slow Fourier transform from the input array to the output array: #include <math.h> typedef struct { double r; double i; } complex; void fourier(complex * x, complex * y, int np) { int n, k; for (k = 0; k < np; ++k) { y[k].r = y[k].i = 0; for (n = 0; n < np; ++n) { double c = cos(2*M_PI*k*n/np); double s = sin(2*M_PI*k*n/np); y[k].r += x[n].r * c + x[n].i * s; y[k].i += -x[n].r * s + x[n].i * c; } } } This is a pretty direct implementation of the definition of a discrete Fourier transform as given in equation 1 from the Wikipedia article on DFT [1]. On my iMac (3.4 GHz Intel Core i5), compiled with "cc -Ofast", here are timings: size time/FT FTs/sec ---- --------- ------- 128 0.24 ms 4167 256 0.93 ms 1074 512 3.8 ms 263 1024 15.5 ms 65 2048 65.6 ms 15 4096 243 ms 4 That would plenty fast for many interesting learning projects, like a real time guitar tuner for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_transform&oldid=809829098 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_...
SimonPStevens 9y ago
I'm fairly convinced that audio books are deliberately read slower than normal speech to cater for the widest possible audience. I don't think people new to audio books are put off by it being slower than necessary, but if you found it too fast to follow you would give up fairly quickly. So by recording at a slow speed that caters for something like 90% of listeners you retain the maximum number of listeners. This is basically a long winded way of saying that I think audio book makers expect the average person to bump the speed up a little. [I listen to audio books on Audible at around 2x speed.]
- legohead 9y ago
  I could see doing that for academic material, but when I listen to fantasy/scifi (which I do most of the time), I enjoy the voice acting too much to speed it up. In some cases it makes the books a lot better than they were written.
  - aluhut 9y ago
    Victor Bevine is like enjoying a drink near a camp fire. This guy could read a book about the worst moments in my life and I'd still enjoy it.
  - visarga 9y ago
    Can you give examples of audiobooks that have great voice acting?
    - legohead 9y ago
      Sure: https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Blade-Itself-Audiobook/B014LL6R5U/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1511283060&sr=1-1 https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Blade-Itself-A... The voice actor, Steven Pacey, is so amazing I've considered listening to other books he's narrated solely due to his performance. I haven't quite gone that far yet, though :) However, I do recommend this book/series -- if you like fantasy.
alg_fun 9y ago
I listen to books and articles via text to speech application for over 3 years. Currently i am able to listen comfortably at 3.6x speed. I don't know how to test comprehension through. My friend says i might be able to think faster than other people, because of superhuman listening powers i now posess. Don't know how to test that either.
- kevingrahl 9y ago
  Mind sharing what application you‘re using? Is there something open source that works great?
  - alg_fun 9y ago
    I use voice aloud reader for android. It is has awful ux but allows up to 4x speed.
- visarga 9y ago
  I have made a browser extension that helps me put every webpage I read through TTS. I also get current word highlight on text and automatic page scroll. It helps me focus twice as good, I can't even stand reading without TTS support any more. Unfortunately I can only stand one voice - "Alex" from OSX, at about 1.3x ... 1.5x speed. Other voices I find irritating. I'm following the new WaveNet TTS voices with great expectations, but they don't seem to come near my laptop. WaveNet: https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio/ https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio...
k__ 9y ago
I often listen to everything informational (not infotainment) on 1.5 - 2 thw first time. It's harder to scan audio than writing and I don't have all day to find useful stuff. Sadly many things are video/audio nowadays
caoilte 9y ago
It's a product of the inherently cut-price / amateur nature of the medium. Give me a well scripted well produced drama, comedy stand-up routine or documentary and I want to listen to it at 1x. Everything else is information sparse ad-libbing off of semi-improvised material re-hashed from books and articles then strung together with conversational back scratching. Or the one dimensional drone of someone reading from a book/script. Is slow-core a thing yet? Audially ram-packed soundscapes lovingly crafted over months of careful layering of complementary edits that rewards the patient and attentive listener with hours of meat-speed re-listening. Sounds a bit hipster tho.
- remir 9y ago
  I agree. The podcasts I enjoy the most are produced by radios (CBC, NPR, BBC) because there's not much fluff, inside jokes and rambling from the hosts. The audio is good, the content is good and well presented by the hosts. Sometimes there's sound effects or music, but it's not a problem. But stuff from Twit.tv is simply unbearable to me.
nickjj 9y ago
I find that audio quality plays a huge role in playback speed tolerance. I can enjoyably listen at 2x for some people, but others I cannot go beyond 1.5x and I've been listening to audio at 1.5x or 2x for a long time. It's much less about their pace too. It's overall line quality and how clear they enunciate words. For my own recordings I try hard to make them feel good at 2x (even tho I naturally speak fast and manually edit out pauses). About 10% of the people who take my developer courses listen at 1.5x or 2x and have enjoyed the clear audio experience.
- xinyhn 9y ago
  Absolutely agree. A few podcasts I listen to that I would consider very high production quality I can easily do 2x and some of the more casual content ones I have pushed to 3x. However, some of the fringe, sounding like they are recorded on a phone become difficult to understand even at 1.5x.
rctay89 9y ago
Is there a way on Android/iPhone to both listen to a podcast and music at the same time? Unfortunately, earphone time is limited for me, and too often I choose one over the other at the expense of my learning, no prizes for guessing which...
zanny 9y ago
I subscribe to a few dozen podcasts with AntennaPod... didn't even consider speeding up playback. Going to try 1.1x this week. I do like retaining information and I usually like to think about what my podcasters are talking about (Like Stuff You Should Know / Radiolab) so I can't see myself speeding it up that much. I just never even realized this was a thing, and that that 1.0X next to the playback buttons actually did something...
emodendroket 9y ago
> Take 34-year-old Jason Strickland, who works for a land surveyor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day, and listened at normal speed until he came upon the Movies by Minutes series of podcasts, which analyzes iconic movies minute by minute. (In other words, every episode is devoted to one minute of a movie.) When he found it, the hosts had already completed the original Star Wars trilogy, which was 378 episodes, plus a few special episodes, so he started downloading 50 episodes at a time and listening at 2x speed. "It took about a month per movie to get caught up," he said, explaining that he would listen to whatever podcasts were on his current listening list in the morning, and then power through the Movies by Minutes episodes in the afternoons. "Once I was current, I would then go find another show to download and get caught up, repeating this for all the shows." Unless I'm doing something mostly physical or mindless I can't listen to a podcast and work at all.
pyreal 9y ago
Discovering the YouTube speed options setting rocked my world. I found it difficult to watch many videos - especially instructional - because the speakers were just such slow talkers. I come from the Eastern Canadian province of Newfoundland where many speak our own unique fast and abbreviated English dialect - especially in tiny rural areas like where I live. Listening to "mainland" North Americans speaking English is painfully slow. Now I can set them to 1.25-1.5X and be close to the speed that I'm used to in conversation.
Kluny 9y ago
I don't do podcasts, but sometimes I'll do video tutorials, and the best sites (Microsoft University, Lynda.com, etc) have both transcripts and the option to listen at double speed. I always take advantage of both options. Hearing and reading the material simultaneously helps it stick in my mind better, and listening at double speed effectively cuts in half the time it takes to complete the course, which makes me feel SO much better about spending another couple hours in front of the computer at night, instead of going outside to play.
ALee 9y ago
I'm an Overcast user who cranks it up to 3x+ speeds, minimizing silences and voice boosts. The experience is enhanced when you have earbuds (or some type of noise-cancelling). I also find that when I do it during an athletic activity like biking, I somehow can listen to more things probably because I'm doing something rote. The real key to all this though is when someone finally creates this for online articles or books - sure, I could download a version, format change in calibre and then have it read to me via Voice Dream, but I need a better voice than the technical voices nowadays. I would definitely pay for this. Lastly, this also occurs in other media for me - pretty much any movie before 1990 can be watched at 1.5X on VLC. Similarly, every YouTube clip is set to 2X usually as well. It may sound exhausting, but you just get used to it after a while.
divbzero 9y ago
I’ve tried this before and have mixed feelings about it. 1. Speed-listening certainly increases the number of words I hear, but does it actually increase the amount of ideas I absorb? 2. To what degree does speed-listening impact my ability to engage fully in normal-speed human conversations? (Also, do some podcast producers speed up their recordings and edit out silences before publishing? For example, I suspect a16z does this with their podcasts.)
- linuxliaison 9y ago
  I certainly edit out those silences from my podcast. Often when I'm listening back, those pauses are just too long, especially when you're the only one talking. In regards to speed-listening, I just don't think it's a good idea. If you're rushing through anything (or at least feeling rushed), more often than not, you're not truly enjoying it.
sjm 9y ago
I get this works for people on certain types of podcasts, but surely with well-produced podcasts (e.g. Heavyweight, Love & Radio, Reply All, S-Town...) the pauses and pacing is a meaningful artistic choice, one that a 2x speed just rushes through like an impatient child.

197 points by Osiris30 9y ago

I love 2x playback for videos - I like to catch up on various work internal meeting recordsings etc at double-speed. I wish netflix would add 2x to its shows! It takes a bit of effort but isn't so hard to get used to. Love it.

nrhodes 9y ago
The Video Speed Controller Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...) allows you to speed up Netflix or any video that uses HTML 5 for playback.
- ivan_ah 9y ago
  This ^ is worth its weight in gold. The ability to adjust speed in increments of 0.1 is really good. You can watch a lecture at 1.7x 1.8x or if the speaker is slow, then up to 2.3x and more... On the topic of 2.3x video watching, I've observed that "question periods" after lectures are very difficult to watch at 2x speed. It seems the pace of "lecture speech" is deliberately slower for most prepared speeches, but when it comes to live question-answer periods rates jumps up. Has anyone else noticed this?
deleted 9y ago
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vanattab 9y ago
I find 2x great for getting more information from non fiction lectures and the like but terrible for movies/novels. You lose a lot of the emotion and it just sounds odd and "chipmunk" like.

pawelwentpawel 9y ago

I speed-listen to lectures, usually 2x. It not only allows me to eat more information within a limited time frame but also keeps me much more focused than listening to them at a normal speed.

wlesieutre 9y ago
There's a blind guy in my office building and I sometimes hear his iPhone doing voiceover in the hallway. If I didn't know better I'd have a hard time believing there are even words in it.

ilamont 9y ago

A few years back I worked on a website that was very ADA compliant. Part of the development involved testing for different use cases, including users who have low vision. Some of the software for this audience reads through alt and body text at what sounds like 4x or 5x the speed. It was practically unintelligible to my untrained ears, but one colleague who uses screen readers every day had no problem with it.

everling 9y ago

Relevant Portlandia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA

toephu2 9y ago

Slow down guys...learn to enjoy life at normal speed, seriously, you don't need to act like you're in the rat race 24/7.

mrob 9y ago
In most podcasts the value is in the information, not the timing. 2x speed is more enjoyable (or maybe a relaxing 1.5x speed if you don't feel like concentrating) because there's less boring waiting involved.
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  Depends on the podcast honestly. If it's a comedy podcast, listening at 2x defeats the point. Even if it's a purely educational podcast or audiobook, any form of pacing or diction is lost at 2x, which, ironically, makes the story boring as well imo.
  - amputect 9y ago
    My two favorite podcasts are Sawbones and Welcome to Night Vale. I don't, like, personally care if people listen to them at high speed. It doesn't bug me and I don't judge them for it. My personal experience (descriptive, not prescriptive) follows: Sawbones is an edu-comedy podcast about medical history, and I tried listening to it faster and just didn't enjoy it as much. I really enjoy the comedic timing and interplay between the hosts, and it's already information rich enough that I feel fine listening to it at normal speed is fine. One of the things I really like about WtNV is the almost menacing, deliberate pacing of the narrator. His speech is so perfectly even, regardless of the content, that it's almost hypnotic. I tried that at 1.25x and it felt off, but again it's a personal preference thing.
- sevensor 9y ago
  Personally, I find that if I let my mind wander a little bit while listening to programming podcasts, it makes connections to my work all by itself. I worry that if I sped up, I'd miss those. Also, since my listening time is also when I'm doing household chores, I need to be able to relax my attention on the podcast without losing the thread.

furyofantares 9y ago

I speed listen to podcasts (and audiobooks and speed watch lectures) for an entirely different reason: I am able to maintain attention on the material. I am sure I get less out of it than someone who is able to pay attention at 1x, but I get nothing out of 1x and never got anything but frustration out of lectures in school, so speed listening opened up a whole new world for me.

trisimix 9y ago
Holy crap this might actually help me.
- anotheryou 9y ago
  enjoy :) it really feels good to pump interesting thoughts in at the speed limit of perception and recognition :)
rconti 9y ago
I was studying for a cert and needed to review some material faster so I started doing 1.5x and 1.7x up to 2x. What's amazing is how quickly you adapt. The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER, even at 2x, and when you slow down to 1.5x it seems positively glacial. But you're right, you need to focus. It leaves a lot less time for letting your mind wander. You don't get anything for free. I sometimes watch NFL condensed games and they cut out all the non-play activity so you can watch a game in 40 mins-- which sounds great, but you realize it's 40 mins of intense focus if you want to follow what's going on.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- fedups 9y ago
  > The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER No kidding. Overcast has a "Smartspeed" feature that cuts out these pauses. The counter on my app says it's saved me 195 hours to date.

jbgreer 9y ago

Related: I speed-watch all non-music videos at least at 1.25x or 1.5x, sometimes 2x. I wonder how many people select tech videos based on length? Surely YouTube / Vimeo etc. has studied this? I wish there was a search option that let me filter content based on length.

ovrdrv3 9y ago
Youtube sort of has a filter available - Short (under 4 mins) or Long (Over 20 mins)

kentosi 9y ago

Not just podcasts, I also do this with YouTube when someone talks really slow or if it's an instructional video I just want to get the information out of. Having hotkeys ">" and "<" also help control the speed when needed.

erikb 9y ago
Yeah instructional videos are awesome on 1.25 (or 1.5 if the English is good). And you can still slow down and even pause if something is harder to understand. I wish this would've been possible already when I went to school. How many hours could've been saved...
dzhiurgis 9y ago
I just have couple of bookmarklets: javascript:document.getElementsByTagName(%22video%22)%5B0%5D.playbackRate=2.5 Interestingly some browser start to clip audio at certain speeds. Also, heavy accents become difficult to listen at higher speeds. p.s. comma and dot (got me confused with ><) on youtube skips video frame by frame.

malydok 9y ago

Speed aside, I can't imagine listening to any attention-demanding podcast for more than 3 hours. Apart from straight up brain strain it wouldn't result in a lot of knowledge retention.

crispyambulance 9y ago

I find 1.5x to be OK, but 2x always ends up sounding too choppy and abrupt. It is clear that the playback software shifts the pitch downward so it matches the 1x pitch, but there's still some "artifacts" that show up when you go beyond 1.5x. Is there a precise word for this kind of distortion? besides "choppy"? Also, I wonder how far you could get in time compression by merely removing spaces between words without actually compressing the words?

zepn 9y ago
As for your final point, it's an optional feature but the Pocket Casts app records exactly that, alongside the amount of time spent listening and the time spent listening to speed-adjusted podcasts.
danjc 9y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_time_stretching_and_pitch_scaling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_time_stretching_and_pi...
dec0dedab0de 9y ago
I wonder how far you could get in time compression by merely removing spaces between words without actually compressing the words? That is interesting, but a good speaker uses spacing to better convey their message. In order for it to work, it would have to somehow take into account rhythm. Perhaps just cutting longer spaces instead of spaces between words. Maybe even starting with the creator, or users tagging unnecessary bits such as coughing, or reaching for a drink.
- Osmium 9y ago
  It's also the case that often there aren't spaces between words. One of the surprising things when you first start doing audio analysis is that the pauses between words that you perceive aren't actually there in reality -- which makes them a lot more difficult to 'remove' algorithmically.
  - 9y ago

bearcobra 9y ago

I recently changed my Pocket Casts settings to trim silence and play at 1.8x for most of my subscriptions. The only exceptions are shows that do a lot of audio production like Reply All, RadioLab and The Adventure Zone. I've even found myself adjusting to the faster speed on comedic podcasts, which has been the most surprising to me.

ec109685 9y ago

> He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day, and listened at normal speed until he came upon the Movies by Minutes series of podcasts, which analyzes iconic movies minute by minute. Interesting job that provides enough down time to listen to podcasts at faster than normal speed 8 hours a day.

MartinCron 9y ago
Or a profoundly uninteresting job.
- ThePadawan 9y ago
  Or a job with very high requirements on response time, but very low probability of problems, such as security guard, emergency server technician, night shift at a pharmacy or hotel front desk.
camiller 9y ago
First thing that comes to mind for me is desk clerk at a u-store-it facility. Lot of those places try to hire students because the student can study most of the time and deal with the occasional customer. You could conceivably have whole days without having to interact with a customer. I'm sure there are other jobs that are like that.
hsod 9y ago
Truck driver?
joshvm 9y ago
His job is mentioned in the sentence before this: > Take 34-year-old Jason Strickland, who works for a land surveyor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day ...

himom 9y ago

I speed listened to the Stanford iOS course. Some lecturers just talk too slowly, pause too often or speak with low information density.

camiller 9y ago

On the rare occasion that I can just sit and listen I'll use anywhere from 1.7x-2.2x. More commonly when I'm driving I rarely got above 1.2x. I just can't retain anything if I go faster while driving. I hadn't heard of the silence skipping feature but just checked and my player of choice (Podcast Addict) has it. Just turned it on so I'll see how that goes.

infogulch 9y ago
1.3x on a new podcast is about my limit. But the more I listen to a specific podcast and the more I get used to the hosts voices the faster I can speed it up. E.g. I've listened to ATP for a couple years now and I'm up to 2.3-2.5x now. I can barely hit 3x and still comprehend, but I really have to strain to understand, which is a bad idea since I mostly listen while driving. When I first started listening to podcasts in general and played around with the multiplier even 2x sounded like completely incomprehensible gibberish to me. The strangeness of super speed becomes apparent again when it starts autoplaying when someone else can hear. Their confused look is kinda funny though haha.
isostatic 9y ago
How badly is your driving skill effected when you listen to a podcast? I won't listen to audio books in the car because it takes concentration away from what I should be doing (safely operating a mechanical killing machine at 70mph)
- petercooper 9y ago
  I can't speak for camiller, but I'd say it improves my driving. It engages a totally different part of the brain, and listening to spoken audio stops my mind from wandering and daydreaming by chatting to itself. For similar reasons, I listen to audio books while going to sleep (obviously, the physical and visual stimuli while driving ensure I don't fall asleep then ;-)).
- wccrawford 9y ago
  I've listened to audio books in my car for years now, and the worst thing that happens is that I'll fail to listen to the audio for a while if anything important happens while driving. It has never, ever happened the other way.

otterpro 9y ago

I watch/listen at 1.25x-1.5x for some Vlogs and Youtube videos because the pacing is just too slow. A lot of Youtubers and Podcasters just drone on and on, or speak at a very slow pace, that I just lose interest. When pacing is done right, its actually fun to watch/listen to, and there is always something interesting, and I find it enjoyable to watch at 1x. The scene/topic/point/illustrations switch quickly to the next one, and the story moves forward without wasting precious time. One example of good pacing is Casey Neistat's vlog. Unfortunately, most Youtubers just don't.

nimz 9y ago
Veteran podcast hosts speak relatively slowly, so that it allows for the widest range of listening speed comfort levels amongst their listeners. People can then use their podcast player to customize how fast they like to listen. This is an easy way to tell apart the experienced and inexperienced podcasts.

pwinnski 9y ago

One of my siblings is quoted in this article, and most people in his life are annoyed both at how much time he spends listening to podcasts (even at hyper-speed) and how much he talks about them. I don't have a problem with listening quickly, it's the very long list of podcasts that suggests misguided focus.

brandon272 9y ago
It didn't occur to me that this could devolve into borderline dysfunctional behavior, but it does make sense. I think my first instinct when reading the article was that these folks are lucky to be consuming large amounts of podcast content.
- cabaalis 9y ago
  I had the exact opposite reaction; I was wondering how in the world they could be functional with that amount of noise going into their minds. To each his own, of course, but I cannot fathom how they could possibly be consuming that amount of spoken word and still focusing on tasks at hand.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Well, you can't. They're either giving their work or the podcasts short shrift.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Not really a matter of luck...
JoblessWonder 9y ago
Yeah... Sounds like hoarding tendencies.
Mz 9y ago
Maybe it is his relationships that are dysfunctional, not his interest in podcasts. When I was involved in online gifted parenting groups, it was common to see smart kids "obsessed" with something that worked well for them. In my family, the dysfunctional behavior was resolved by helping my son find ways to genuinely get his needs met so he wasn't intellectually starving anymore. I also helped him find outlets foir his interests. The example I always gave him was that there was nothing wrong with liking debate, but go join a debate club instead if picking arguments with your mom every day. He never joined a debate club, but he did learn to find socially acceptable outlets and stopped making me apoplectic. I will add that gifted kids who were "obsessed" with a particular thing were often twice exceptional. They were gifted and also had some kind of handicap. Their obsession was something that adequately met their intellectual needs after years of starving because it somehow was both sufficiently information dense and delivered the information in a way that worked well for them. Someone who speed listens to podcasts constantly sounds to me like someone seeking a density of information in a format that works for them.

deleted 9y ago

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xutopia 9y ago

I speed up only to 1.25X or not at all. I find there is a sweet spot between listening faster and actually taking in what is being said. I used to do 2x but found myself forgetting the contents rather than remembering like I normally would.

thefifthsetpin 9y ago

I remember the first time I heard the intro music to the fivethirtyeight politics podcast at 1x speed. Had a completely different feel from what I had grown accustomed to.

Unbeliever69 9y ago

I never used to do this when I was young, but now that I'm getting older a sense of haste has crept into my life. I speed listen to podcasts, YouTube (non-music videos) and educational videos (such as technology learning modules on Eggheadio, Udemy etc.). It took me some time to adapt to this style of learning, but now, I wouldn't do it any other way. It makes me feel like I'm packing more into my day and as you get older, this is a comforting thing.

dalbasal 9y ago
I wonder if it's an age thing (seems counter to my intuition) or more of a zeitgeist, sign of the times type of thing. The world (especially the digital/knowledge world) is faster these days.
- losteric 9y ago
  I believe the need for constant stimulation reflects today's world, while the desire to focus on productive subjects tends to come with maturity (not age). Personally, I think we're over-indexing on knowledge acquisition while underemphasizing taking action.
lbotos 9y ago
I'm "young" and I love 2x on youtube and such, not to get "more" but it actually gives me more time to reflect on the content. If I can listen at a pace I'm comfortable, usually when the video ends I can spend that extra time or so thinking about the concepts presented, not just moving on. The fact that it helps both of us to achieve different ends is pretty interesting.

scottlegrand2 9y ago

I watch deep learning course videos at 2-3x depending on the speaker's cadence.

hateful 9y ago

I started doing this with youtube science channels, especially after PBS Spacetime changed to that new guy.

legitster 9y ago

I have a co-worker who does this emphatically. He's the type where everything must be lifehacked to death. I get that it's a great way to speed through content quickly, but I've noticed that he has no way to discern quality anymore. In fact, he will avoid well produced, quality podcasts because they move too quickly and include sound effects and music. So yeah, I get it. But it seems to encourage the wrong sort of content - long, windy, with no effort made into presentation or editing.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
That must be me. I hate long winded, sound effected podcasts. It's just fluff to mask average content. Compare a16z with Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman (gosh even that name sucks). a16z has no ads, no sound effects, no blabber, but absolutely excellent content. Masters of Scale tho move slowly, keep repeating same things and feels like it's targeting children, way more edited. Edit: maybe it's just the format that makes it interesting. Google Cloud Podcast, Good Day Sir, Software Engineering Daily - all have conversational format, almost a debate.
- Hextinium 9y ago
  I completely agree with the fluff in the sound effects and re-explaining. I used to be able to listen to NPR for hours but after listening to conversational podcasts I can't listen anymore to NPR. It's just too slow and the format bores me.
- legitster 9y ago
  Must be a difference in taste. If the podcast only consists of back and forth conversation, I check out or look for a transcript (since I can read faster than the fastest speed listener). An episode of 99% Invisible though... I want to slow down and enjoy like a fine wine.
  - dzhiurgis 9y ago
    English not a native tongue, so listening is faster to me. Plus gives eyes a rest. But how does reading transcript different from normal text? p.s. I do like 99% Invisible, my most recent find.

eco 9y ago

One odd thing I found while listening to conversational comedy podcasts at 1.5x was that I found them to be funnier. I believe it's because if the pause before someone says something very clever is short it makes it even more impressive (and funny) that they thought of it.

eco 9y ago

For audiobooks I tend to start the book off at 1x for the first few hours because it's hard to follow while they are establishing characters and environment when you speed it up. Once I have a feel for those I gradually speed up to 1.4-1.7x (depending on the narrator).

desireco42 9y ago

I used to listen to x1.2-1.4, I don't do this anymore. I just mark them all read and listen to what I really am interested in. I do have more then... well around 80+... Anyhow, I wanted to share an anecdote, I am listening to 'Note to Self' and host is sharing her feelings and concerns and fears... And I am thinking, this lady is so nervous and jumpy and her friends too. So next time when I was opening an app, I am thinking, do I really want to listen to this nervous lady telling me about how to handle social media... then it dawns me that she just sounds nervous because I've been listening on 1.4x and everyone will sound nervous if they talk about their feeling on speed. So there...

solomatov 9y ago

I usually listen to audibooks at 2x speeds and lectures on at least 1.5x speed. It was hard to get used to first, but after a couple of months of practice, I think, I have good comprehension at these speeds. I wasn't able to increase speed though.

0xCMP 9y ago

I listen to tons of podcasts at faster speeds, but rarely beyond 2x. It really does feel like people are talking so slowly sometimes. I often do it so I don't get bored, wander off in my mind, and miss a huge part of the podcast. I still wander off, but it's far less and it helps getting through the backlog. I make sure to keep the list to a minimum though. Sounds like these guys are listening to way too much.

timthelion 9y ago

It seems to me that this is really a matter of condensing low density fluff. I've read 1/2 page papers on computer science that took me days to get through. The problem wasn't my reading speed.

cortesoft 9y ago
Subject 'density' isn't something that can be just ramped up and down at will. Not everything can be conveyed at the same level of 'density' as those 1/2 page computer science papers you are referencing. You can think of it like compression in computer science; not every file is equally compressable.

mavhc 9y ago

I listen to podcasts at 1.70x currently with Annetta, and talk TV shows at 1.3x with xbmc or mxplayer

Dowwie 9y ago

Podcasts aren't just about content. That's part of why they're so great. Speed through an audio book but not a podcast!

jccalhoun 9y ago

I find that if I listen to podcasts at faster speeds I can get them but it requires I pay more attention to them. However, I am usually listening to a podcast and doing something else at the same time (like posting on hackernews). I find that the moderate pace of podcasts means I can drift my attention back and forth between the visual stimuli and auditory stimuli more easily. (maybe I could learn to do it with podcasts playing more quickly but I don't think I listen to enough podcasts to do that)

janwh 9y ago

I do understand why people would want to speed up their podcasts backlogs—I'm currently about 50% in, working my way through >500 hours of 5by5's Back To Work with Merlin Mann. I've tried speeding that up but one thing in particular causes me to stick with 1.1x at max: it's the connection with the hosts. It's just information (both useful and less so) condensed to be hastily consumed but it discards the dedication the hosts have put into it. Playing off of each other. The inside jokes, the subtle differences in tone and timing. Maybe I'm just not as good in processing such social interactions at a faster pace than real-time. But I love "sharing a laugh" as if it's happening right now. That feeling completely goes away when the audio is sped up.

Fnoord 9y ago
Humor is a trick to help making information stick in your head. Not a new trick; advertising uses that trick all the time. There's no way that with speed listening or reading everything sticks equally as listening or reading a 1.0x speed multiplier. It may feel like you got more done, but in reality you did not. You're essentially fooling yourself, feeling like you accomplished more than you did. I do the same, but with movies/series. I "watch" them on a second screen without being all the time focused to it. Except if its a really good movie/serie. But if it isn't a good one, why watch it in the first place?
- burkaman 9y ago
  Do you have any reason to believe this besides intuition? Anecdotally you'll find lots of people who say they retain a lot more at 2x speed than 1x, including me. Just look around this thread. Here's one study on this I found with a quick search: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-015-0841-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-015-0841-2 My own intuition tells me that everyone probably has a maximum (and maybe minimum) speed that they're comfortable with, and there's no reason to assume that a podcast host's preferred speaking rate is the same as an audience member's preferred listening rate. Speeding up your primary focus is not at all comparable to consuming something as a secondary focus. I agree that "watching" something in the background is terrible for comprehension and retention.

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

Speed listening seems like a win win but it's not if you are trying to learn. One of the rules of learning is that you must pay attention to what you are learning something that's hard to do with speed listening. If you just want to be entertained then I can see its benefits.

hrktb 9y ago
Perhaps think of listening as a direct equivalent to reading. People who focus enough will read a book at the right speed their brain can best process the information. But that speed is not the same for everyone, some people will go through a book twice as fast as others while extracting the same amont of learnings, and we won’t tell them they read at the wrong speed. If it’s true for books, why would it be different for audio contents ? There’s really no special rule that makes 1x playback a golden speed, especialy considering some podcaster speak faster in person than when they record for instance. Or the otherway round, podcats like ATP have the silences auto-trimmed to some extent making it denser than when they record. To each their speed.

mihau 9y ago

Is it only me or does anyone also feel like focusing on podcast "speed-listening" is waay easier than reading an article ? no distractions, no ads, no external links == no million tabs open, ->> you cannot easily scroll and tldr stuff <<-

anotheryou 9y ago
use pocket (and on android: ivona tts :) )

cerealbad 9y ago

2x speed often gives you better than 50% content retention. speed consumers are doing their own version of manual audio search, by unconsciously skipping over non-information and slowing down or repeating perceived relevant noise (or just toggling on/off focused attention). a more aggressive version of this is actually skipping 15-20 minute chunks of audio at a time and trying to pick up contextual clues about the preceding chunks to verify if they are worth listening. the greedy approach often pays off here if you are just looking for one or two specific portions in a giant pile of noise. you might end up doing 10 skips and listening to 8-15 minutes of 90 minutes of content. information addiction leads to a sensation of impending doom. the knowledge you would like to access and understand is spreading like a dark cloud and your global-time is counting down. my solution was to read the ~15 core books and retain their surface sensation. the rest is now processing and categorizing "new" information, pattern matching categories and bias detection to remove false positives.

rcarmo 9y ago

I'm steadily in the Overcast 1.7x+ camp. The audio processing is nothing short of phenomenal (if a drain on battery on my iPhone 6), and over time, I've adjusted to the point where the speed seems natural and I can spare enough CPU cycles to steer me through my commute. Other commenters' points that it is also a sort of focus enhancer also ring true to me--I have arrived at the office with nearly 100% retention of what a specific recording was about, especially since I tend to listen to technical podcasts like TWIML[1] (which focuses on stuff I do at work), and I get nothing but value from being able to listen to two podcasts during my one-hour commutes. Softer stuff like Merlin Mann, Gruber, etc. I will either navigate with the chapter guide or making liberal use of the skip buttons. I seldom (if ever) listen to any kind of podcast at normal speed, except for some language courses. Even then, I tend to slow down only for languages like Mandarin or Hebrew (which I'm less acquainted with). Spanish, French, etc. (which I know from childhood) tend to be drawn out enough that I can even speed up a little :) [1]: https://twimlai.com/ https://twimlai.com/

tw1010 9y ago

Isn't it a bit strange that what some these people are listening to is not particularly educational, but is rather entertainment? Speed listening a show which deconstructs movies frame by frame, that's kind of silly. For what reason? Definitely not for the entertainment value. (Or not completely.) FOMO, perhaps. A need to be able to keep up with the conversation at work and with friends, possibly. I'm just curious what's going on in the backs of these peoples minds, because it seems incredibly irrational. I'll admit that even I have had periods in my life when I have done this. Some flavour of addiction and a habit of getting things in a very short time-span is definitely part of it. But I'm not even sure I am fully aware of all the pieces of the psychological puzzle which would explain it.

buryat 9y ago

One thing you notice after speed-listening is how slow humans speak in real life

cyberferret 9y ago
The ironic thing (for me) is that I actually tend to speak too fast in real life. People are always asking me to slow down or repeat myself. I have to force myself to talk slowly. Yet, I cannot listen to podcasts on anything more than 1x speed. Must be a processing issue somewhere in my brain that causes this disconnect...

anotheryou 9y ago

I have to speed-listen, not to drift off when things are too slow. Podcasts, unlike good movies, often lack details to focus on when the plot is slow. Any good android and windows player recommendations? I can recommend: windows: windows media player (surprisingly good, once you found the playback speed menu) android: antennapod (sadly you can only cycle through speeds one way, which is really annoying). But it has the benefit of supporting chapters, subscriptions, auto-downloading and removing files etc.

mrlyc 9y ago

This sounds great! I have 680 GB of podcasts recorded at 128 kbps which equates to 1.35 years of constant listening. I could definitely listen at a higher speed while doing housework, gardening or washing the dishes. I'd be concerned about doing it while driving, though, as that requires (for me, at least) a lot of concentration.

fsiefken 9y ago

Some podcasts provide transcripts, I find them much faster to read then to listen to. Also being selective at what podcasts and episodes you listen to helps. Speed reading selective long reads (previously saved with DevonThink or Pocket) or speed listening to them in the dark is what I do.

JoshMnem 9y ago

I listen to Udemy courses and YouTube videos at 1.5x to 2x speed, depending on the speed of the talking. You can improve the listening comprehension with practice.

cyberferret 9y ago

I've tried it many times, but I just cannot consume podcasts at anything more than 1x speed. Any more, and I begin to understand how someone on the autism spectrum might feel in a normal social situation. I too went through a phase of getting addicted to podcasts and subscribing to almost every one that people recommended to me. But then I realised that I simply could not listen to them all within my allotted 'listening time' - which is usually during a 1hr walk in the mornings. So now I simply don't bother trying to keep up with listening to consecutive episodes, no matter how much I enjoy the podcast. I just go to my list of waiting episodes as I walk out my front gate, and hit 'play'. If it finishes during my walk, I start another random one from the list. If I return home before it finishes, I hit 'stop' and rarely go back to it unless it was particularly informative. I just treat my podcast list as a virtual sock drawer that I can reach in and grab anything out of without looking. I no longer live with the FOMO anxiety that I might miss a brilliant episode somewhere. I have too many other important things to do in my day.

jldugger 9y ago
I don't know if you're actually looking for advise here, but my recommendation is that you start off slow. 1.05x is virtually indistinguishable. Every month or two a rampup of .1x is equally indistinguishable, although there's a plateau somewhere. I should probably try bumping it up another .1x myself, now that I think about this.
- andai 9y ago
  Can confirm. Even in a single session I like to slowly increase the speed. You get used to each one after a few minutes, and eventually you will turn it back to 1x and be shocked by how slow it sounds!
- mmerlin 9y ago
  Did exactly that and found 1.2 to 1.25 is best depending on the voice pitch and cadence
loeg 9y ago
I do the next tick above 1x in Overcast -- 1.1x or so.

joshschreuder 9y ago

If you haven't tried it yet, have a go at playing back videos you watch at 1.1x. Over the space of a 50 minute TV show or more, saving 10% of your time is pretty useful. I don't think I've run into anything where I have been distracted by 1.1x, besides theme songs to shows I am familiar with which obviously don't sound like what you expect. It's basically unnoticeable.

RmDen 9y ago

It depends on the podcast.. something like twit, Joe Rogan, motley fool, stuff you should know, Jocko podcast I listen to at 2x since some of those are 2-3 hours and I don't lose anything at that speed(At least I believe I don't). Hardcore history I do at 1x... everything else is at 1.5

alphaalpha101 9y ago

I really hate podcasts. I can't stand listening to unfunny people with bad microphones taking 15x as long to get information across because they insist on starting every episode with a bunch of discussion about their boring lives, followed by various tweets people have sent them. Then they get distracted constantly throughout the podcast. It's just infuriating. What podcasts do people recommend? Because I'm surely not listening to the best ones.

brianbreslin 9y ago

I listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x. When I hear them now at regular speed, the hosts voices sound strange to me. Even more strange is when I listen to my friends' podcasts at 1.5x when I know their voice in normal speed. I would like to try 1.75x, but none of the common podcast or audiobook apps have that fine grained adjustment. 2x is too fast for me.

froindt 9y ago
I've found PocketCasts (on Android, not sure of iOS) to be my favorite app. It allows 0.1x resolution. It won't get you 1.75, but 1.7 or 1.8 will be nearly identical.

zzz95 9y ago

This is very surprising, as I often end up constantly rewinding and re-listening. Most of the time my mind wanders off to contemplate the repercussions of what I am listening to and sometimes I just want to take time to process. Is this normal or am I too slow? Are people binge listening to really lightweight podcasts or is it something else!

jldugger 9y ago

> In fact, according to behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, because recordings played at higher speeds are at a higher pitch, they are actually easier to hear. Uh... that's not how modern speedup works. Here's a brief rundown: 1. break the audio up into very small windows 2. FFT audio in a window from time domain to frequency domain 3. FFT the audio back from frequency to time domain, with an even smaller window (or larger, if you want to slow playback down). The frequencies resulting are the same, but shorter in duration. Obviously there's some sampling bias that can creep in, but these algorithms are generally pitch-stable.

gleenn 9y ago
For anyone interested in a simple implementation of FFT, I found this neat little example which was very grokkable if you speak Java: https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/97data/FFT.java.html https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/97data/FFT.java.html
- tzs 9y ago
  For those who just want to play around with Fourier transforms, it is worth noting that computers are fast enough nowadays that you can often get away with a slow Fourier transform instead of a fast Fourier transform. The former is O(N^2) as opposed to O(N log N), but is also much easier to understand. To wit, in C, here is a function that takes a pointer to an input array of complex numbers, and output array of complex numbers, and a count of how many numbers are in the input, and does a discrete slow Fourier transform from the input array to the output array: #include <math.h> typedef struct { double r; double i; } complex; void fourier(complex * x, complex * y, int np) { int n, k; for (k = 0; k < np; ++k) { y[k].r = y[k].i = 0; for (n = 0; n < np; ++n) { double c = cos(2*M_PI*k*n/np); double s = sin(2*M_PI*k*n/np); y[k].r += x[n].r * c + x[n].i * s; y[k].i += -x[n].r * s + x[n].i * c; } } } This is a pretty direct implementation of the definition of a discrete Fourier transform as given in equation 1 from the Wikipedia article on DFT [1]. On my iMac (3.4 GHz Intel Core i5), compiled with "cc -Ofast", here are timings: size time/FT FTs/sec ---- --------- ------- 128 0.24 ms 4167 256 0.93 ms 1074 512 3.8 ms 263 1024 15.5 ms 65 2048 65.6 ms 15 4096 243 ms 4 That would plenty fast for many interesting learning projects, like a real time guitar tuner for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_transform&oldid=809829098 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discrete_Fourier_...

SimonPStevens 9y ago

I'm fairly convinced that audio books are deliberately read slower than normal speech to cater for the widest possible audience. I don't think people new to audio books are put off by it being slower than necessary, but if you found it too fast to follow you would give up fairly quickly. So by recording at a slow speed that caters for something like 90% of listeners you retain the maximum number of listeners. This is basically a long winded way of saying that I think audio book makers expect the average person to bump the speed up a little. [I listen to audio books on Audible at around 2x speed.]

legohead 9y ago
I could see doing that for academic material, but when I listen to fantasy/scifi (which I do most of the time), I enjoy the voice acting too much to speed it up. In some cases it makes the books a lot better than they were written.
- aluhut 9y ago
  Victor Bevine is like enjoying a drink near a camp fire. This guy could read a book about the worst moments in my life and I'd still enjoy it.
- visarga 9y ago
  Can you give examples of audiobooks that have great voice acting?
  - legohead 9y ago
    Sure: https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Blade-Itself-Audiobook/B014LL6R5U/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1511283060&sr=1-1 https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Blade-Itself-A... The voice actor, Steven Pacey, is so amazing I've considered listening to other books he's narrated solely due to his performance. I haven't quite gone that far yet, though :) However, I do recommend this book/series -- if you like fantasy.

alg_fun 9y ago

I listen to books and articles via text to speech application for over 3 years. Currently i am able to listen comfortably at 3.6x speed. I don't know how to test comprehension through. My friend says i might be able to think faster than other people, because of superhuman listening powers i now posess. Don't know how to test that either.

kevingrahl 9y ago
Mind sharing what application you‘re using? Is there something open source that works great?
- alg_fun 9y ago
  I use voice aloud reader for android. It is has awful ux but allows up to 4x speed.
visarga 9y ago
I have made a browser extension that helps me put every webpage I read through TTS. I also get current word highlight on text and automatic page scroll. It helps me focus twice as good, I can't even stand reading without TTS support any more. Unfortunately I can only stand one voice - "Alex" from OSX, at about 1.3x ... 1.5x speed. Other voices I find irritating. I'm following the new WaveNet TTS voices with great expectations, but they don't seem to come near my laptop. WaveNet: https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio/ https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio...

k__ 9y ago

I often listen to everything informational (not infotainment) on 1.5 - 2 thw first time. It's harder to scan audio than writing and I don't have all day to find useful stuff. Sadly many things are video/audio nowadays

caoilte 9y ago

It's a product of the inherently cut-price / amateur nature of the medium. Give me a well scripted well produced drama, comedy stand-up routine or documentary and I want to listen to it at 1x. Everything else is information sparse ad-libbing off of semi-improvised material re-hashed from books and articles then strung together with conversational back scratching. Or the one dimensional drone of someone reading from a book/script. Is slow-core a thing yet? Audially ram-packed soundscapes lovingly crafted over months of careful layering of complementary edits that rewards the patient and attentive listener with hours of meat-speed re-listening. Sounds a bit hipster tho.

remir 9y ago
I agree. The podcasts I enjoy the most are produced by radios (CBC, NPR, BBC) because there's not much fluff, inside jokes and rambling from the hosts. The audio is good, the content is good and well presented by the hosts. Sometimes there's sound effects or music, but it's not a problem. But stuff from Twit.tv is simply unbearable to me.

nickjj 9y ago

I find that audio quality plays a huge role in playback speed tolerance. I can enjoyably listen at 2x for some people, but others I cannot go beyond 1.5x and I've been listening to audio at 1.5x or 2x for a long time. It's much less about their pace too. It's overall line quality and how clear they enunciate words. For my own recordings I try hard to make them feel good at 2x (even tho I naturally speak fast and manually edit out pauses). About 10% of the people who take my developer courses listen at 1.5x or 2x and have enjoyed the clear audio experience.

xinyhn 9y ago
Absolutely agree. A few podcasts I listen to that I would consider very high production quality I can easily do 2x and some of the more casual content ones I have pushed to 3x. However, some of the fringe, sounding like they are recorded on a phone become difficult to understand even at 1.5x.

rctay89 9y ago

Is there a way on Android/iPhone to both listen to a podcast and music at the same time? Unfortunately, earphone time is limited for me, and too often I choose one over the other at the expense of my learning, no prizes for guessing which...

zanny 9y ago

I subscribe to a few dozen podcasts with AntennaPod... didn't even consider speeding up playback. Going to try 1.1x this week. I do like retaining information and I usually like to think about what my podcasters are talking about (Like Stuff You Should Know / Radiolab) so I can't see myself speeding it up that much. I just never even realized this was a thing, and that that 1.0X next to the playback buttons actually did something...

emodendroket 9y ago

> Take 34-year-old Jason Strickland, who works for a land surveyor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He listens to around eight hours of podcasts at work every day, and listened at normal speed until he came upon the Movies by Minutes series of podcasts, which analyzes iconic movies minute by minute. (In other words, every episode is devoted to one minute of a movie.) When he found it, the hosts had already completed the original Star Wars trilogy, which was 378 episodes, plus a few special episodes, so he started downloading 50 episodes at a time and listening at 2x speed. "It took about a month per movie to get caught up," he said, explaining that he would listen to whatever podcasts were on his current listening list in the morning, and then power through the Movies by Minutes episodes in the afternoons. "Once I was current, I would then go find another show to download and get caught up, repeating this for all the shows." Unless I'm doing something mostly physical or mindless I can't listen to a podcast and work at all.

pyreal 9y ago

Discovering the YouTube speed options setting rocked my world. I found it difficult to watch many videos - especially instructional - because the speakers were just such slow talkers. I come from the Eastern Canadian province of Newfoundland where many speak our own unique fast and abbreviated English dialect - especially in tiny rural areas like where I live. Listening to "mainland" North Americans speaking English is painfully slow. Now I can set them to 1.25-1.5X and be close to the speed that I'm used to in conversation.

Kluny 9y ago

I don't do podcasts, but sometimes I'll do video tutorials, and the best sites (Microsoft University, Lynda.com, etc) have both transcripts and the option to listen at double speed. I always take advantage of both options. Hearing and reading the material simultaneously helps it stick in my mind better, and listening at double speed effectively cuts in half the time it takes to complete the course, which makes me feel SO much better about spending another couple hours in front of the computer at night, instead of going outside to play.

ALee 9y ago

I'm an Overcast user who cranks it up to 3x+ speeds, minimizing silences and voice boosts. The experience is enhanced when you have earbuds (or some type of noise-cancelling). I also find that when I do it during an athletic activity like biking, I somehow can listen to more things probably because I'm doing something rote. The real key to all this though is when someone finally creates this for online articles or books - sure, I could download a version, format change in calibre and then have it read to me via Voice Dream, but I need a better voice than the technical voices nowadays. I would definitely pay for this. Lastly, this also occurs in other media for me - pretty much any movie before 1990 can be watched at 1.5X on VLC. Similarly, every YouTube clip is set to 2X usually as well. It may sound exhausting, but you just get used to it after a while.

divbzero 9y ago

I’ve tried this before and have mixed feelings about it. 1. Speed-listening certainly increases the number of words I hear, but does it actually increase the amount of ideas I absorb? 2. To what degree does speed-listening impact my ability to engage fully in normal-speed human conversations? (Also, do some podcast producers speed up their recordings and edit out silences before publishing? For example, I suspect a16z does this with their podcasts.)

linuxliaison 9y ago
I certainly edit out those silences from my podcast. Often when I'm listening back, those pauses are just too long, especially when you're the only one talking. In regards to speed-listening, I just don't think it's a good idea. If you're rushing through anything (or at least feeling rushed), more often than not, you're not truly enjoying it.

sjm 9y ago

I get this works for people on certain types of podcasts, but surely with well-produced podcasts (e.g. Heavyweight, Love & Radio, Reply All, S-Town...) the pauses and pacing is a meaningful artistic choice, one that a 2x speed just rushes through like an impatient child.