Speed Listening & Speed Watching - The State of the Art

This post will discuss the background of speech, logically deduce why it is more effective to accelerate the spoken material you consume, and then present a couple of the software tools for listening to audio material and viewing videos at accelerated speeds.

The average speed of speech is between 100-200 words per minute (WPM). The average reading speed is 200-300 WPM, and with just a little bit of training can be dramatically improved.

These facts imply that the human mind is able to process information faster than the rate of speech.

Based on this implication, one should be able to accelerate the rate of spoken or educational audio/video without affecting comprehension. Of course, if you just speed up the play speed of audio, you will get a chipmunk effect, whereby the voices are pitched up. In order to combat this, some modern media players are able to pitch-correct the material so that the speed is increased without changing the pitch of the voices.

I listen to and view most of the spoken/educational material I consume in this way at double speed, and I can say in all honesty that double speed is easily understandable with no loss of comprehension. This is assuming one stays focused on the material being spoken and doesn't day dream, which is the true challenge. If you start thinking about what has been said and go off on a tangent, you will come back to realize that the speaker has marched on without you. Obviously you don't have this problem when reading, as you will generally stop reading when pondering what is before you.

With the help of a few (FREE) software applications, you can test whether consuming information in this manner is right for you!

The first application I will discuss is a relatively recent addition to my software stable, Gomplayer,which I already mentioned it in a previous post. The main advantage of Gomplayer (aside from it being completely free) is that it can handle practically any video type you can throw at it, and that it can accelerate these videos reasonably well. At the time of writing, it does not accelerate perfectly, the video becomes a little bit choppy and the audio has a slight ghosting effect, but remains almost perfectly understandable (with a little bit of effort). I consume most seminars and educational videos I watch accellerated by Gomplayer.

The second I will present is "an old favourite" (did you detect the sarcasm?), Windows Media Player (WMP). For the last few versions WMP has had a lovely feature in its "Enhancements" section called "Play Speed", which you can access by pressing Alt-V for the View menu, then going to the Enhancements menu then selecting "Play Speed Settings" (shortcut key combination Alt-V-E-L):


This is what it looks like. To try it out, load up some spoken material in WMP as you normally would, then play around with the slider. WMP does a very good job of pitch correcting, with almost no noticeable distortion. It is currently the best way I have found to listen to spoken audio. Until the latest version, the audio would clip and distort at speeds above 2x, however they seem to have fixed this. It is possible (however more challenging) to understand at speeds higher than 2x, but I find that these speeds are best reserved for skimming the material.

As much as I love to hate WMP, I must say it has pulled this functionality off very well. It's a shame that it doesn't work at all with accelerating video!

That's all for now, I hope you found this ramble useful!