Comments on: iPod and Audio Books

Question: iPod and Audio Books

josh — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:37:46 -0800

Does anyone have one of the new iPods that let you speed up audio books? Can you really listen to them that way?

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:59:51 -0800

Haven't used the new iPod yet, but simlar features have been available in tape recorders for a while, and it is definitely listenable, but you have to pay more attention to the act of listening, sort of the difference between casually watching words flow by on a tv screen and actually sitting and reading a book at a good speed.

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 21:21:04 -0800

I just got one of the new ones. The only audiobooks I have are the free 9/11 Commission and Democratic Convention downloads from the iTMS. And, testing the "Faster" setting, no, I couldn't listen to sped-up audiobooks for very long. The ends of the words feel clipped, and the tempo is jarring, like watching sped-up video of people walking.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 10:03:45 -0800

Just wondering, does "speed up" mean that the words are closer together, or that the audiobook sounds like the Chipmunks?

By: xil

xil — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 11:37:06 -0800

I haven't used it myself, but it's almost certainly sped up without a change in pitch.

The Chipmunks effect is not only annoying, but it makes speech much harder to understand, so it would make the whole feature essentially useless. We expect certain features of the sound we call "speech" to fall in certain frequency ranges, but simply changing the speed of playback causes the sound to shift in frequency -- and not in a natural way -- so we can't easily comprehend them. Here's an example of the frequency ranges of various vowels. Google for "speech formant" if you want to know more.
</overly-technical>

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 18:51:52 -0800

Does this feature also work with regular music, or just things downloaded from Audible?