Audiobooks discussion
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Playback speed 2x
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Crazyfoxxy
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Jun 04, 2015 11:56AM
Does anyone else LOVE to listen to their audio books at the 2x playback speed? I wish I could get Overdrive to go even faster!
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I do. 1x is painful for me now. It also makes some of the "door stop" books (30+ hours) a little less daunting. I do slow down a bit for heavy accents.
Kristie wrote: "I do. 1x is painful for me now. It also makes some of the "door stop" books (30+ hours) a little less daunting. I do slow down a bit for heavy accents."Painful, yes. That's exactly what the slower speeds are like for me now. And you're right about the door stops - might be time to finally roll out 'Infinite Jest'.
Just read it earlier this year. It was good. I didn't bother with the end notes, but that is tricky for those that want to follow them.
Oh, thanks. I remember when the publishers came out with the audiobook and fans were annoyed that it didn't have the endnotes. Do you think the book was less without them?
I am not an English major or a DFW groupie, so I just followed the story and enjoyed it just fine. If you buy it on Audible you get the end notes PDF with it. You can also get the audio of the notes from Audible, but I think switching back and forth between audiobooks would be awkward.
Switching back and forth does sound tedious, especially at high speed. I'll add it to my Audible wishlist and probably just listen to the main book. thanks!
I have a question... I often simply listen to audiobooks using my computer and ITunes since I live alone and don't like wearing earbuds fulltime. Is there a way to increase speed using ITunes on the computer? I've looked, and so have a few friends, and we can't find a way to do it. I'm a narration fan so I might not want a faster speed all the time, but a number of slow-paced or mediocre books could benefit from an artificial speed up.
I'm almost positive you can, Jeanie. I don't recall how at the moment but will look when I get home.
1) Right click on the iTunes playlist and click "Show in Windows Explorer" or whichever finder you use2) Right click on the content in Explorer and click "Open with Quicktime player".
3) While listening, open the Show A/V pulldown or hit control-k. Adjust your speed.
Crazyfoxxy wrote: "1) Right click on the iTunes playlist and click "Show in Windows Explorer" or whichever finder you use2) Right click on the content in Explorer and click "Open with Quicktime player".
3) While l..."
Thank you!
One of the reasons I don't like using Windows Audible Manager is that I have not found a way to adjust the speed.
Looks like you've already got what you need, Jeanie.I can't listen at 2x, it's just a little too fast for me, I'm usually around 1.5-1.7 depending on the narrator. I definitely can't do 1x either. Every once in a while I will tell myself that I'm going to start at 1x until the story gets going, but I rarely hold out more than a couple of minutes.
Happy to see that so many people find listening at 1x painful too. I listen at 1.5 or 2x depending on the narrator.
This thread is making me feel much better. My friends and colleagues think I'm bananas for listening at these speeds.
I listen at faster speeds when I can but I do most of my listening with my Sansa clip and when I up the speed at all it sounds like the chipmunks talking. It's very disappointing though I love everything else about it so I keep using it.
I listen at 1.5x - 2x depending on the narrator. I can't even with 1x anymore, it's too painful.
I've started listening to some books at 2X speed [my iPad Nano won't play at 1.5, which is too bad], very selectively, but for some narrations, it's a big help as I find they're reading too slow or taking too many pauses. If the subject matter or story is complex, I'll usually listen at regular speed so my brain can compute the words and meanings.
I listen to a book for say the first 30mins at 1.5x until I get into it, then it goes to 2.0 and stays there. My challenging book The Iliad by Homer is currently on 1.5x. If Its a book that hasn't 100% hooked me while Im multi-tasking I might go back to 1.5x. Also sometimes on a bad/old recording going to 2.0x makes the narrators pitch change.
I will start at 1x just to make sure I've got names down and then I'll speed it up. 2x is where I will finish a book. 1.5x is for the bulk of the listening. I've had the same reaction as Crazyfoxxy when I tell people I listen at faster speeds. In defense of training your ears to the faster speed, I recently attended a workshop and the guy was a speed talker. If he was on audio you wouldn't have been able to speed up the narration because he was already at 2x normally! As a result I was happily following along and people around me were left in the dust. He developed an app called "Scholly" that aggregates content for high school or college students to sort through scholarship offerings. He got funding on Shark Tank and if you ever see the episode, he fast talked the sharks and got funding. Too funny!
I guess I don't listen to audio for the speed. For speed, I can read in print much faster than I can listen. I am looking for the narrator to bring something to the experience, accents, intonation, even pauses and I don't mind if it takes longer. I rarely purchase a book under about 8 hours long. If I speed up the book, as I did for All the Light We Cannot See, that's a bad sign - it shows I am finding it tiresome and I just want to get through it.
right now i am forced to listen through a google music app but i will try this on my next audible book
I understand your point, Robin, and for a book with an exceptional narration, I'm with you completely. However, my purpose in listening is focused on the story… and sometimes a slightly faster speed to listen just works better. But as others have mentioned, I too listen at normal speed at first, to get a taste for the narrator, the characters and then I can make a decision about whether to speed things. It's nice to be able to chose, and of course, one isn't committed to a full listening at one speed for an entire book. I never used to speed things up, until I was immersed in a very long book with a slow reader. I was enjoying the story very much, but not so much listening. So, for the first time, I upped the speed and there it was.. the solution to my listening dilemma.
Another vote for 2x but like Nikki, when I'm multi-tasking I'll go down to 1.5x. I have encountered very few instances of chipmunk voices. I find the faster speeds just decrease the pauses between sentences for the most part. It's amazing how much silence there is per hour of an audiobook.It's like buying a bag of chips with half of it filled with air :-)
The first audiobook I tried on 2x was To Kill a Mockingbird with Sissy Spacek as narrator. I kept double checking to make sure it was on 2x because her narration is so slow. :) I agree with Grumpus...I don't notice chipmunk voices and appreciate the compressing of pauses. Now when I try to listen to podcasts with conversation in them I definitely notice the speed and tend to listen to those at more like 1.5x.
As a result of this conversation I boldly changed the speed of the book I'm listening to from 1.25 to 1.5. I noticed the difference for only 20 seconds or do. Maybe I'll eventually get even bolder! Thanks for the push.
I normally listen on 1.5. But I listen to a few narrators on 1.25(normally because they read faster then others anyways). I just wish audible had a slider for every .1 on the axis. There are lots of books where I feel 1.5 is too fast but 1.25 is too slow, and even more where 1.5 is too slow and 2 is too fast.
Aaron wrote: "I normally listen on 1.5. But I listen to a few narrators on 1.25(normally because they read faster then others anyways). I just wish audible had a slider for every .1 on the axis. There are lot..."Ditto.
Kathleen wrote: "As a result of this conversation I boldly changed the speed of the book I'm listening to from 1.25 to 1.5. I noticed the difference for only 20 seconds or do. Maybe I'll eventually get even bolder!..."That's how it started for me too, one step at a time. Good luck!
Jan wrote: "I listen at faster speeds when I can but I do most of my listening with my Sansa clip and when I up the speed at all it sounds like the chipmunks talking. It's very disappointing though I love ever..."I have the same experience with the Sansa Fuze. The speed settings are Fast, Normal, and Slow, so I don't actually know what "Fast" means in terms of 1.5x or 2.0x. But whatever the "Fast" speed is, I too get the "chipmunk" voices which I can't tolerate.
That is the one think I don't like about my Sansa, Alan. I was beginning to think it was just me experiencing the chipmunk effect - thanks for posting and letting me know I'm not doing something wrong.
