10 ms·

Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

81 points by dbieber 4y ago

hsn915 4y ago
What's the point of listening to 3 books per day? You need time to digest the ideas in a book. Sometimes I listen to one chapter in a book and I need a whole day to digest it: I get into a state where I don't want to listen to _any_ music, etc.
- anonymoose33282 4y ago
  I feel the same way about any media: podcasts, TV, movies, etc. The creator put in a lot of time and effort, so to not give it your full attention is a complete disservice. When I watch something, I want to hear every line and not miss any dialogue. When I read something, I want to absorb every sentence. Can't wait to hear someone critiquing our "consumption-obsessed society" in an Amazon review of an economics audiobook they listened to at 6x speed on their morning commute.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > What's the point of listening to 3 books per day? You need time to digest the ideas in a book. Agreed, but sometimes there's value in having broad exposure ASAP. e.g. learning what tools/techniques are available in a given discipline e.g. learning enough jargon to Google for deeper exposure This can be helpful in cross-disciplinary contexts. Perhaps you don't need to truly understand Statistics, for instance, but you're working on a problem in which you've binned a matrix of values into deck-of-card-like suits and you want to evaluate how "good" each choice was within its local context. It would help to know terms like "categorical variables" and "goodness of fit".
ranting-moth 4y ago
I listen on audio books between 100-300% speed, depending on the reader, topic and my mood. For majority of books, I'd go crazy if I was stuck to 100% speed. VLC on Android is great for this.
DuskyHusky 4y ago
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f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I was unconvinced until I listened to the demos at the bottom. I might have to test this with the next book I listen to, seems like it might make the listening experience better too.
Klaster_1 4y ago
The silence removal and speed adjustment should be an integral part of audio content consumption, available in any application, be it a podcast app or a watching YouTube in a browser. The UX matters, if I can't speed up a slow source or it takes too much effort, I'll go listen to something else.
msrsan 4y ago
I like to read and listen at the same time, so this feels quite needed. Any plans to add .mp3 as input?
SimonPStevens 4y ago
As someone who listens to most audio books at between 1.5x and 2x I'm interested to try this. Although I think it will be problematic for me. I would like the silence between words removed. But the silences betweens higher level structural blocks are necessary. You need a pause between chapters to signal the change of topic. Or depending on the books structure, sometimes between paragraphs too, when they indicate a switch of topic/perspective/thread. One of my annoyances with some narrators (directors?) is that the gap between sentences and chapters is equal length, which often makes a confusing jump of context. I like it when each new chapter is announced as it comes.
greenmana 4y ago
"This tool won’t be appropriate for all audiobook listeners. For many, the silences matter, and removing them would degrade the quality of the book. For many, listening at 2.5x would also degrade the quality of the book. So use this tool with caution." It's nice that this was also brought up. At least for me, even though I don't listen to audiobooks, it's too easy to become too "performance-oriented" when reading something. Meaning that ticking the box "achievement unlocked, read another book" becomes more important than what you really get out of the book. Did you now retain as much information as possible? Did you savor the work of art or just gulp it down? Ironically, if you don't use tools like these carefully, listening to books may end up being even a bigger waste of time.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I would say that to have read a text is not the goal, it's a mere implementation detail. The goal is to understand ideas which the text tries to convey. Some texts, and usual human speech, are low-density, high-redundancy. If you can easily understand the ideas they carry, you can listen at a really high speed and still don't miss anything, and later be able to adequately recall the ideas. Some texts are either higher-density, or talk about concepts novel enough for the listener, and it takes some time to unpack the ideas and commit them to memory. Such texts cannot be read too fast, and sometimes require going back a sentence, or a paragraph, and re-reading. An ideal (from the efficiency standpoint) audio book device would have a speed dial to control the level of adaptive compression, like described by the linked page. It would also have controls to jump back a sentence and replay it slower. But such device is unlikely, because I suppose that the main audience of audio books is commuting drivers, who need to keep their hands on the wheel, and their eyes on the road, so they can't properly read. And if course I suppose that the speedup and compression are barely applicable, or need a different approach, to books read with some artistic expression (that us, most fiction worth reading).
  - clnq 4y ago
    I wish we just didn't write low-density, high-redundancy non-fiction anymore. Especially books written in the "self-help" style where about 1% is the core message, and 99% are illustrations, examples, author's opinions, and similar. That 99% is very easy to find online in the age of information deluge, it's probably where the author sourced it. Before the 00s, this content in a book would have been helpful. But these days, it makes sense that most people want to skip it or 2.5x it. I used to carry a reporter notebook and take notes all the time I was listening to audio books. This made it very obvious that there's usually not a lot of information to extract from business books, leadership books, or any other kind of "coaching" books. Now I try to buy the summary variant of these books. Because ultimately, I was making my own summaries in a very time-wasteful way.
nateberkopec 4y ago
Overcast already does this for podcasts, and I really like it. I turn it on 100% of the time.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
A great way to absorb even less than the 5% of information you were going to absorb in the first place when listening at 2.5 speed.
azubinski 4y ago
"Aaron Mayer aims to listen to 100 audiobooks in a single month. He intends to listen to these audiobooks at 2x - 3x speed" I listen to more than 1000 audiobooks per week at 600x speed. And I have a lot of free time left. And I like this sound "bzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhazzzzzzz".
iagooar 4y ago
Meanwhile, I am slowing down the pace of my life a little bit every day. I plan to build a little cabin in the woods, taking my time, enjoying the peace and tranquility of the forest. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks, yes, but I do it slow. I do not want to rush anymore. Life is too short to rush.
glanzwulf 4y ago
I use audible quite a lot, and I like the 1.2x-1.4x range because I feel like sometimes they slow down the original audio and it just doesn't feel... real, but it depends entirely on the books. One time I tried getting it up, I just wasn't sure what was going on and was lost. Sure, after a couple of minutes the brain kind of adapted and I was hearing it but I wasn't actually listening. I feel like the pursue for speed/efficiency kills the time our brain needs to actually absorb and digest what it just listened. If after a week you don't remember anything, what was the point? But hey, if it works for you it works.
smcleod 4y ago
This is built into Overcast which is a decent podcast app.
francis-io 4y ago
I use the app Pocket Cast and listen to podcasts in sped up form. Current stats: * Listened for 27 days 9 hours, * Manual Skipping: Saved 17 hours, * Increased speed: Saved 31 days 21 hours, * Auto trim silence: Saved 6 days 14 hours
swyx 4y ago
the embedded comments section in the blogpost seems to lead directly to a discord channel. thats a pretty unique comment system! wonder how effective it has been for the author.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
I often listen to talks at faster speeds, but there's a trick to it: ramp the speed. Start at 1x, then increment the speed slowly over a bit of time giving your brain time to adjust. You can easily get to 3x speed by "ramping" the speed over a period of time. Is there any audio book reader that supports such speed ramping? In an automatic way?
surfsvammel 4y ago
Oh my god. This increases my stress level just reading about it. I am happy I’m past the quantity stage and into actually enjoying things part of my life.
a1371 4y ago
I routinely watch videos and listen to audiobooks at 2.75x, that's somehow the magic number for me. I can only do it with the headphones (not speakers) and I only lose a negligible number of words. I'm not planning to stop but I have noticed that after a few years of doing this, my speech has gotten faster. This is not good because I feel sometimes I don't let people process what I say and sometimes I make them feel rushed. I suppose fast listening is subconsciously training me to speak faster Another interesting observation is that I often don't know what the theme musics of my favorite YouTube channels sound like because they sound very different at a faster speed. When I accidentally hear them at normal speed I think to myself that they actually sound a lot nicer than what I'm used to.
matsemann 4y ago
I like how this is different from many other tools, as it can also leave the pauses untouched while speeding up the speaking. For me, listening at something above >2x is often hard, as it gets all mashed together. Most tools that speed up "dynamically", does so by removing the silent parts. But I need those, those are the ones telling me when one word ends and the other one begins. So I'd like more tools to do the opposite: increase the speed of the words, but keep the pauses between words so my brain registers the start/end.
prokopton 4y ago
Why fully absorb a book when you can just have it smashed against your brain?
- luizanao 4y ago
  yeah, I was wondering the same. I just saw in another thread somewhere "how to get youtube videos summary with AI". This "hurry up" atmosphere that we're pushing towards ourselves will eat us in form of anxiety and increasing stupidness
  - zen_of_prog 4y ago
    Anxiety, sure, but it's not a new trend and I don't think we're any more stupid than we were before. https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/
judiisis 4y ago
Btw this silence removal feature for youtube videos is available in newpipe and libretube for android and skip silence browser extension
nobrains 4y ago
I like listening to audio on >1x but those no sound gaps are important for me, as they let me catch up my thought to the audio, incase I lose track. So, either I could listen to audio, using this tool, but keep the speed 1x, OR use >1x speed but not use this tool (i.e. keep the gaps). Cannot do both.
loveparade 4y ago
I love listening to audiobooks at 1.5x-2x speed while I'm walking outside. I can get through 100 books a year this way. Of course I don't take notes or think deeply about the content. Who needs that? In fact, I have no idea which books I've read this year! Or last year! All I want is cross stuff off my vanity to-do list consisting of books collected from HN and get a feeling of accomplishment. And I can tell others about it! 100 books a year! /s
- indy 4y ago
  100 books a year? Those are rookie numbers! Don't forget that you have two ears, why not listen to two books simultaneously? Left ear can have personal life hack books and right ear can have business books
  - jonatron 4y ago
    But you know what I like more than materialistic things? Knowledge. In fact, I’m a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold two thousand new books that I bought. It’s like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, “the more you learn, the more you earn.”
  - mountaineagle 4y ago
    Two books? Hah, I have one book in each ear, read one with each eye and use my fingers to read an additional two written in braille.
    - 0x073 4y ago
      You can improve with using your feet too
      - mountaineagle 4y ago
        Very unrealistic, how can I do that while running a marathon?
kristiandupont 4y ago
Lifehack: watch trailers instead of the movies and you can get through 50 in a day easy!
totalhack 4y ago
I listen on 1.2x on Spotify and 1.3x on Audible (has more fine grained control) and it just sounds normal after a little while. I tried 1.5x and it was tough to follow. My wife thinks I'm insane anytime she hears the audio. It's interesting that there seems to be some training component to ramping up speed.
philipphutterer 4y ago
Cool, I like the idea and I actually use this feature a lot in Google Podcasts. However, I believe there is a way to do this with a single ffmpeg command. I remember watching lecture videos with higher speeds wondering about the huge amount of silence that made it still pretty annoying. I didn’t find anything simple to trim silence on audio and video combined and finally only listened to the audio with trimmed silence using ffmpeg. Edit: It's literally just an audio filter in ffmpeg, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/29411973 https://stackoverflow.com/a/29411973
surprisetalk 4y ago
I'm a huge fan of "speedy media"! [1] https://taylor.town/the-speedy-media-manifesto https://taylor.town/the-speedy-media-manifesto
bborud 4y ago
I usually listen to audio books at between 1.2 and 1.4 times speed. This started when I was listening to Madeleine Albright's "Fascism: a warning" and I found her narration speed to be uncomfortably slow. So I figured I'd try out the speed settings in Audible. I had tried them before, but they sounded really bad. Now they sound pretty OK unless there is background music. After that I have been experimenting a bit with speed settings and what feels comfortable really depends on the narrator. It isn't just how fast or slow they narrate, but also the cadence and the material they are reading. Some material requires some time for processing and thinking while listening. I end up adjusting the speed for every book I listen to and it is rare that I go any faster than 1.4. Fastbook was a bit uncomfortable to listen to. It totally kills the rhythm of how someone speaks. However it does a surprisingly good job of not making it sound too bad. It is unpleasant to listen to, but it isn't immediately obvious why. So I'd call that perhaps a partial win? I've tried to gradually up the narration speed, but even if I can understand what people are saying at 2x, it doesn't leave much room for thinking about what they are saying before they are on to the next idea. There is no time for processing. I noticed that I'd pause books to get some time to think - which is clumsy and inefficient. For video courses I often vary the speed between 1x and 2x speed. Some instructors have a terrible teaching style where their narration is peppered with irrelevant and annoying asides. For instance when they take time to explain something that ought to be obvious and which isn't directly related to the material. Then again for video courses, I make much more use of pausing, speed adjustment, I go back to play things again, stop to think etc. I don't think this obsession with very high speed is useful. What is useful is to adapt the speed to where it feels comfortable and where you can absorb what is being said.
bbokan 4y ago
This does make sense. Audio books are an easy way to see what books are worth reading.
Aardwolf 4y ago
Sometimes slowing down is also useful, e.g. for learning a new language
chillbill 4y ago
This may well be beyond the etiquette of HN but listening to podcasts/YT/audiobooks on fast speeds and omitting silence breaks is really stupid. Slow frying your brain to save 5 minutes here and there doesn’t make you smarter.
- nmcfarl 4y ago
  If I could not speed up podcasts, I would not listen to them at all. As a matter fact, before I had access to a podcast player with this feature up I did not listen to them at all. There’s way too much fluff, even in a good technical podcast (these actually seem to be the ones that neglect all editing, so many speakers are half ‘ums’ or long pauses while they come up with what to say next) and of course the “fun” podcasts are mostly made of fluff and are largely unlistenable at below 2x
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I don't understand this, especially with podcasts - it's not frying anyone's brain to listen to 2x speed. I listen to podcasts at 2x because I (and everyone else) can hear and understand way faster than people normally speak. The only difference between 1x and 2x speed is that I find the people sound more intelligent and engaged. They sound passionate and focused at that speed, that's really the biggest difference.
buckleyc 4y ago
If you already have 'ffmpeg' (which he uses to convert the audio to .wav), then you could keep going and use this for most all the process. Looking at the related audio filters (i.e., -filter:audio, or -filter:a, or -af): - to remove silence : -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak - to shorten duration : -af rubberband=tempo=4 - if you wanted to quickly/easily normailze the audio : -af loudnorm This leads to: ffmpeg -i happy_book.mp3 -af loudnorm -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak -af rubberband=tempo=4 happy_book_out.mp4 You could roll all those options into one filter command, but leaving like this for newer-users to digest. I also tend to re-encode using libfdk (though you need to be sure that your ffmpeg is compiled with this enabled) for a better mp4 (or .m4a or .m4b), so : ffmpeg -i happy_book.mp3 -af loudnorm -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak -af rubberband=tempo=4 -c:a libfdk_aac happy_book_out.m4a
Cipater 4y ago
I am looking for a podcast application that allows me to customize the voice pitch to eliminate vocal fry. Although many outstanding podcasts are American, it appears that most of them are presented by hosts who use this particular register. I've attempted to ignore or get used to it, but it remains an issue for me. Additionally, I struggle with hosts who have a habit of ending every sentence with an upward inflection, which I find quite annoying.
okasaki 4y ago
Don't most players have a way to vary playback speed already? The FOSS android audiobook app I use (Voice) has it. Youtube and twitch both have it too, so does mpv/mplayer.
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mark_l_watson 4y ago
Nice open source project, but ironically I feel that it would take too much of my time preparing shortened audio books. My wife and I have both been family plan members of Audible for about 10 years and when you include their free audio book Plus Catalog, we have probably well over 1000 shared books. I sometimes speed up listing by up to 1.5 times faster for books that I like well enough to finish, but not 100% liking. For some books I really like, I may end up listening to them two or more times - so it is not all about saving time. Yesterday, I was 3 hours into a 12 hour book and I was not loving it but wanted to enjoy the ending so I skipped forward to just the last two hours. Even though I am mostly retired, I find there is not time enough for much of what I would like to do. My personal best strategy for getting time back is learning how to enjoy just the first few episodes of streaming video series, and then stopping unless I really love the series. One last thing on the subject of using time effectively: I find that the recall from reading some books I really loved is far from perfect. My wife and I subscribe to the Blinkist service, and I find a really good use of time is to occasionally read (or listen) to a 15 minute summary of a previously read book and then spend another 5 minutes thinking about the book.
TurkeyTurtle 4y ago
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mattferderer 4y ago
Semi-related, check out Snipd for podcasts. As a former 2x podcast & audible listener, I prefer there style of consumption. I can still listen at a reasonable 1.5x (or faster if you wish). They have transcriptions you can use to read along or use to create notes. For popular podcasts you can review a list of snippets people saved. It's easy to share your snippets with friends, note & storage apps. I would love to see a version of this for books and audio books. I do know that you can buy both the written & audio books & then use one of many review or summary websites to compare & see what other people have taken from the book. But it would nice to see this all in one app. For podcasts, Snipd has set the bar for the time being.
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- manmal 4y ago
  VoiceOver on mobile OSes can output at a speed that I personally can’t comprehend. It seems there are indeed people who can.
- cush 4y ago
  Here's a video of blind person programming with Visual Studio using a screen reader. It reads so fast the words come out to me like mumbles or almost a buzzing sound https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc&t=42s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc&t=42s
  - RobMurray 4y ago
    I have my screen reader faster than that video most of the time, and I know some other blind people who can understand it much faster. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can try the robotic sounding voice used in the video, which is also the one I use with my screen reader. It is called eloquence. I can understand voiceover with eloquence at 85%, but have my phone set to 75% most of the time so that I can hear it in a noisy environment.
SappyHippo 4y ago
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hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
I'm a big fan of removing silences and speeding up podcasts, but I rarely do it for audio books. But hey, if it makes people happy, why not!
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- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  This account is a bot that makes banal comments.
QueenBean 4y ago
[flagged]
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  This is another bot.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Thanks, I flagged this and the other one you mentioned. Do you know if that's the right way to bring these to dang's attention?
NerdAlerts 4y ago
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thornewolf 4y ago
I'm one of those people who is obsessed with viewing or listening to content more quickly. I've managed to push to 2.8x on video and 3-3.5x on audio depending on content.
specialist 4y ago
My future perfect podcast player would - transcribe - automunge that transcription - remove "ah", "um" etc - remove repeated phrases [0] - optionally summarize [1] - stitch the surviving segments back into continuous audio - match words-per-minute between the speakers [2] - do all the "smartspeed" stuff that Fastbook and Overcast.app do [0] Notable example: Scott Galloway of The Pivot adopted the affection of repeating phrases for emphasis. Drives me batty. [1] No shade, because I understand it's a chat and not scripted, but Accidental Tech Podcast could benefit from summarization. I love that they're talking stuff out. But sometimes I just want the conclusions. [2] Like when Lex Fridman interviews someone who talks faster than him.
SmoothBooth 4y ago
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shartshooter 4y ago
I stopped listening to audiobooks and podcasts at faster speeds because I found myself rushing when speaking. It's like it recalibrated my set communicating speed, in a bad way. I've switched back to 1x, which felt painfully slow at first, but it's helped me slow down and think more. YMMV
algog 4y ago
This reminds me of a joke from Woody Allen. He learned to speed read "War And Peace". When asked what's the book about? He said, "Russia".
glial 4y ago
Just to add to the chorus: some books need to be slowed down to follow. I find books like Paradise Lost, Blood Meridian, or even Sherlock Holmes are almost impossible to follow at normal speed.
Tagbert 4y ago
I do use the similar feature in the Overcast Podcast Player for most podcasts where the story telling is not important but for audio books, I’m more about the experience of the book. I could just read it but an audiobook is more enveloping.
the_omegist 4y ago
I got into the trap of wanting to read more , hence faster, thinking I wold gain more knowledge that way. After a couple of years I realized : - most modern books just don't worth the time spent reading them : a simple summary would do and often doesn't bring anything new anyway - the rare books worth reading require time to be processed (for essays) or to get immersed (for novels). So such apps solve a false dichotomy, in my opinion. But it can be useful as an "improved podcasts" maker. For the audiobooks I was making, I used this app which is great and highly customizable (speed, pauses time, export in multiple formats, cut into chunks, ...) : balabolka[1] [1] http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

81 points by dbieber 4y ago

What's the point of listening to 3 books per day? You need time to digest the ideas in a book. Sometimes I listen to one chapter in a book and I need a whole day to digest it: I get into a state where I don't want to listen to _any_ music, etc.

anonymoose33282 4y ago
I feel the same way about any media: podcasts, TV, movies, etc. The creator put in a lot of time and effort, so to not give it your full attention is a complete disservice. When I watch something, I want to hear every line and not miss any dialogue. When I read something, I want to absorb every sentence. Can't wait to hear someone critiquing our "consumption-obsessed society" in an Amazon review of an economics audiobook they listened to at 6x speed on their morning commute.
acuozzo 4y ago
> What's the point of listening to 3 books per day? You need time to digest the ideas in a book. Agreed, but sometimes there's value in having broad exposure ASAP. e.g. learning what tools/techniques are available in a given discipline e.g. learning enough jargon to Google for deeper exposure This can be helpful in cross-disciplinary contexts. Perhaps you don't need to truly understand Statistics, for instance, but you're working on a problem in which you've binned a matrix of values into deck-of-card-like suits and you want to evaluate how "good" each choice was within its local context. It would help to know terms like "categorical variables" and "goodness of fit".

ranting-moth 4y ago

I listen on audio books between 100-300% speed, depending on the reader, topic and my mood. For majority of books, I'd go crazy if I was stuck to 100% speed. VLC on Android is great for this.

DuskyHusky 4y ago

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f0e4c2f7 4y ago

I was unconvinced until I listened to the demos at the bottom. I might have to test this with the next book I listen to, seems like it might make the listening experience better too.

Klaster_1 4y ago

The silence removal and speed adjustment should be an integral part of audio content consumption, available in any application, be it a podcast app or a watching YouTube in a browser. The UX matters, if I can't speed up a slow source or it takes too much effort, I'll go listen to something else.

msrsan 4y ago

I like to read and listen at the same time, so this feels quite needed. Any plans to add .mp3 as input?

SimonPStevens 4y ago

As someone who listens to most audio books at between 1.5x and 2x I'm interested to try this. Although I think it will be problematic for me. I would like the silence between words removed. But the silences betweens higher level structural blocks are necessary. You need a pause between chapters to signal the change of topic. Or depending on the books structure, sometimes between paragraphs too, when they indicate a switch of topic/perspective/thread. One of my annoyances with some narrators (directors?) is that the gap between sentences and chapters is equal length, which often makes a confusing jump of context. I like it when each new chapter is announced as it comes.

greenmana 4y ago

"This tool won’t be appropriate for all audiobook listeners. For many, the silences matter, and removing them would degrade the quality of the book. For many, listening at 2.5x would also degrade the quality of the book. So use this tool with caution." It's nice that this was also brought up. At least for me, even though I don't listen to audiobooks, it's too easy to become too "performance-oriented" when reading something. Meaning that ticking the box "achievement unlocked, read another book" becomes more important than what you really get out of the book. Did you now retain as much information as possible? Did you savor the work of art or just gulp it down? Ironically, if you don't use tools like these carefully, listening to books may end up being even a bigger waste of time.

nine_k 4y ago
I would say that to have read a text is not the goal, it's a mere implementation detail. The goal is to understand ideas which the text tries to convey. Some texts, and usual human speech, are low-density, high-redundancy. If you can easily understand the ideas they carry, you can listen at a really high speed and still don't miss anything, and later be able to adequately recall the ideas. Some texts are either higher-density, or talk about concepts novel enough for the listener, and it takes some time to unpack the ideas and commit them to memory. Such texts cannot be read too fast, and sometimes require going back a sentence, or a paragraph, and re-reading. An ideal (from the efficiency standpoint) audio book device would have a speed dial to control the level of adaptive compression, like described by the linked page. It would also have controls to jump back a sentence and replay it slower. But such device is unlikely, because I suppose that the main audience of audio books is commuting drivers, who need to keep their hands on the wheel, and their eyes on the road, so they can't properly read. And if course I suppose that the speedup and compression are barely applicable, or need a different approach, to books read with some artistic expression (that us, most fiction worth reading).
- clnq 4y ago
  I wish we just didn't write low-density, high-redundancy non-fiction anymore. Especially books written in the "self-help" style where about 1% is the core message, and 99% are illustrations, examples, author's opinions, and similar. That 99% is very easy to find online in the age of information deluge, it's probably where the author sourced it. Before the 00s, this content in a book would have been helpful. But these days, it makes sense that most people want to skip it or 2.5x it. I used to carry a reporter notebook and take notes all the time I was listening to audio books. This made it very obvious that there's usually not a lot of information to extract from business books, leadership books, or any other kind of "coaching" books. Now I try to buy the summary variant of these books. Because ultimately, I was making my own summaries in a very time-wasteful way.

nateberkopec 4y ago

Overcast already does this for podcasts, and I really like it. I turn it on 100% of the time.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

A great way to absorb even less than the 5% of information you were going to absorb in the first place when listening at 2.5 speed.

azubinski 4y ago

"Aaron Mayer aims to listen to 100 audiobooks in a single month. He intends to listen to these audiobooks at 2x - 3x speed" I listen to more than 1000 audiobooks per week at 600x speed. And I have a lot of free time left. And I like this sound "bzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhzhazzzzzzz".

iagooar 4y ago

Meanwhile, I am slowing down the pace of my life a little bit every day. I plan to build a little cabin in the woods, taking my time, enjoying the peace and tranquility of the forest. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks, yes, but I do it slow. I do not want to rush anymore. Life is too short to rush.

glanzwulf 4y ago

I use audible quite a lot, and I like the 1.2x-1.4x range because I feel like sometimes they slow down the original audio and it just doesn't feel... real, but it depends entirely on the books. One time I tried getting it up, I just wasn't sure what was going on and was lost. Sure, after a couple of minutes the brain kind of adapted and I was hearing it but I wasn't actually listening. I feel like the pursue for speed/efficiency kills the time our brain needs to actually absorb and digest what it just listened. If after a week you don't remember anything, what was the point? But hey, if it works for you it works.

smcleod 4y ago

This is built into Overcast which is a decent podcast app.

francis-io 4y ago

I use the app Pocket Cast and listen to podcasts in sped up form. Current stats: * Listened for 27 days 9 hours, * Manual Skipping: Saved 17 hours, * Increased speed: Saved 31 days 21 hours, * Auto trim silence: Saved 6 days 14 hours

swyx 4y ago

the embedded comments section in the blogpost seems to lead directly to a discord channel. thats a pretty unique comment system! wonder how effective it has been for the author.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

I often listen to talks at faster speeds, but there's a trick to it: ramp the speed. Start at 1x, then increment the speed slowly over a bit of time giving your brain time to adjust. You can easily get to 3x speed by "ramping" the speed over a period of time. Is there any audio book reader that supports such speed ramping? In an automatic way?

surfsvammel 4y ago

Oh my god. This increases my stress level just reading about it. I am happy I’m past the quantity stage and into actually enjoying things part of my life.

a1371 4y ago

I routinely watch videos and listen to audiobooks at 2.75x, that's somehow the magic number for me. I can only do it with the headphones (not speakers) and I only lose a negligible number of words. I'm not planning to stop but I have noticed that after a few years of doing this, my speech has gotten faster. This is not good because I feel sometimes I don't let people process what I say and sometimes I make them feel rushed. I suppose fast listening is subconsciously training me to speak faster Another interesting observation is that I often don't know what the theme musics of my favorite YouTube channels sound like because they sound very different at a faster speed. When I accidentally hear them at normal speed I think to myself that they actually sound a lot nicer than what I'm used to.

matsemann 4y ago

I like how this is different from many other tools, as it can also leave the pauses untouched while speeding up the speaking. For me, listening at something above >2x is often hard, as it gets all mashed together. Most tools that speed up "dynamically", does so by removing the silent parts. But I need those, those are the ones telling me when one word ends and the other one begins. So I'd like more tools to do the opposite: increase the speed of the words, but keep the pauses between words so my brain registers the start/end.

prokopton 4y ago

Why fully absorb a book when you can just have it smashed against your brain?

luizanao 4y ago
yeah, I was wondering the same. I just saw in another thread somewhere "how to get youtube videos summary with AI". This "hurry up" atmosphere that we're pushing towards ourselves will eat us in form of anxiety and increasing stupidness
- zen_of_prog 4y ago
  Anxiety, sure, but it's not a new trend and I don't think we're any more stupid than we were before. https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/

judiisis 4y ago

Btw this silence removal feature for youtube videos is available in newpipe and libretube for android and skip silence browser extension

nobrains 4y ago

I like listening to audio on >1x but those no sound gaps are important for me, as they let me catch up my thought to the audio, incase I lose track. So, either I could listen to audio, using this tool, but keep the speed 1x, OR use >1x speed but not use this tool (i.e. keep the gaps). Cannot do both.

loveparade 4y ago

I love listening to audiobooks at 1.5x-2x speed while I'm walking outside. I can get through 100 books a year this way. Of course I don't take notes or think deeply about the content. Who needs that? In fact, I have no idea which books I've read this year! Or last year! All I want is cross stuff off my vanity to-do list consisting of books collected from HN and get a feeling of accomplishment. And I can tell others about it! 100 books a year! /s

indy 4y ago
100 books a year? Those are rookie numbers! Don't forget that you have two ears, why not listen to two books simultaneously? Left ear can have personal life hack books and right ear can have business books
- jonatron 4y ago
  But you know what I like more than materialistic things? Knowledge. In fact, I’m a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold two thousand new books that I bought. It’s like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, “the more you learn, the more you earn.”
- mountaineagle 4y ago
  Two books? Hah, I have one book in each ear, read one with each eye and use my fingers to read an additional two written in braille.
  - 0x073 4y ago
    You can improve with using your feet too
    - mountaineagle 4y ago
      Very unrealistic, how can I do that while running a marathon?

kristiandupont 4y ago

Lifehack: watch trailers instead of the movies and you can get through 50 in a day easy!

totalhack 4y ago

I listen on 1.2x on Spotify and 1.3x on Audible (has more fine grained control) and it just sounds normal after a little while. I tried 1.5x and it was tough to follow. My wife thinks I'm insane anytime she hears the audio. It's interesting that there seems to be some training component to ramping up speed.

philipphutterer 4y ago

Cool, I like the idea and I actually use this feature a lot in Google Podcasts. However, I believe there is a way to do this with a single ffmpeg command. I remember watching lecture videos with higher speeds wondering about the huge amount of silence that made it still pretty annoying. I didn’t find anything simple to trim silence on audio and video combined and finally only listened to the audio with trimmed silence using ffmpeg. Edit: It's literally just an audio filter in ffmpeg, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/29411973 https://stackoverflow.com/a/29411973

surprisetalk 4y ago

I'm a huge fan of "speedy media"! [1] https://taylor.town/the-speedy-media-manifesto https://taylor.town/the-speedy-media-manifesto

bborud 4y ago

I usually listen to audio books at between 1.2 and 1.4 times speed. This started when I was listening to Madeleine Albright's "Fascism: a warning" and I found her narration speed to be uncomfortably slow. So I figured I'd try out the speed settings in Audible. I had tried them before, but they sounded really bad. Now they sound pretty OK unless there is background music. After that I have been experimenting a bit with speed settings and what feels comfortable really depends on the narrator. It isn't just how fast or slow they narrate, but also the cadence and the material they are reading. Some material requires some time for processing and thinking while listening. I end up adjusting the speed for every book I listen to and it is rare that I go any faster than 1.4. Fastbook was a bit uncomfortable to listen to. It totally kills the rhythm of how someone speaks. However it does a surprisingly good job of not making it sound too bad. It is unpleasant to listen to, but it isn't immediately obvious why. So I'd call that perhaps a partial win? I've tried to gradually up the narration speed, but even if I can understand what people are saying at 2x, it doesn't leave much room for thinking about what they are saying before they are on to the next idea. There is no time for processing. I noticed that I'd pause books to get some time to think - which is clumsy and inefficient. For video courses I often vary the speed between 1x and 2x speed. Some instructors have a terrible teaching style where their narration is peppered with irrelevant and annoying asides. For instance when they take time to explain something that ought to be obvious and which isn't directly related to the material. Then again for video courses, I make much more use of pausing, speed adjustment, I go back to play things again, stop to think etc. I don't think this obsession with very high speed is useful. What is useful is to adapt the speed to where it feels comfortable and where you can absorb what is being said.

bbokan 4y ago

This does make sense. Audio books are an easy way to see what books are worth reading.

Aardwolf 4y ago

Sometimes slowing down is also useful, e.g. for learning a new language

chillbill 4y ago

This may well be beyond the etiquette of HN but listening to podcasts/YT/audiobooks on fast speeds and omitting silence breaks is really stupid. Slow frying your brain to save 5 minutes here and there doesn’t make you smarter.

nmcfarl 4y ago
If I could not speed up podcasts, I would not listen to them at all. As a matter fact, before I had access to a podcast player with this feature up I did not listen to them at all. There’s way too much fluff, even in a good technical podcast (these actually seem to be the ones that neglect all editing, so many speakers are half ‘ums’ or long pauses while they come up with what to say next) and of course the “fun” podcasts are mostly made of fluff and are largely unlistenable at below 2x
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I don't understand this, especially with podcasts - it's not frying anyone's brain to listen to 2x speed. I listen to podcasts at 2x because I (and everyone else) can hear and understand way faster than people normally speak. The only difference between 1x and 2x speed is that I find the people sound more intelligent and engaged. They sound passionate and focused at that speed, that's really the biggest difference.

buckleyc 4y ago

If you already have 'ffmpeg' (which he uses to convert the audio to .wav), then you could keep going and use this for most all the process. Looking at the related audio filters (i.e., -filter:audio, or -filter:a, or -af): - to remove silence : -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak - to shorten duration : -af rubberband=tempo=4 - if you wanted to quickly/easily normailze the audio : -af loudnorm This leads to: ffmpeg -i happy_book.mp3 -af loudnorm -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak -af rubberband=tempo=4 happy_book_out.mp4 You could roll all those options into one filter command, but leaving like this for newer-users to digest. I also tend to re-encode using libfdk (though you need to be sure that your ffmpeg is compiled with this enabled) for a better mp4 (or .m4a or .m4b), so : ffmpeg -i happy_book.mp3 -af loudnorm -af silenceremove=1:0:-50dB:detection=peak -af rubberband=tempo=4 -c:a libfdk_aac happy_book_out.m4a

Cipater 4y ago

I am looking for a podcast application that allows me to customize the voice pitch to eliminate vocal fry. Although many outstanding podcasts are American, it appears that most of them are presented by hosts who use this particular register. I've attempted to ignore or get used to it, but it remains an issue for me. Additionally, I struggle with hosts who have a habit of ending every sentence with an upward inflection, which I find quite annoying.

okasaki 4y ago

Don't most players have a way to vary playback speed already? The FOSS android audiobook app I use (Voice) has it. Youtube and twitch both have it too, so does mpv/mplayer.

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mark_l_watson 4y ago

Nice open source project, but ironically I feel that it would take too much of my time preparing shortened audio books. My wife and I have both been family plan members of Audible for about 10 years and when you include their free audio book Plus Catalog, we have probably well over 1000 shared books. I sometimes speed up listing by up to 1.5 times faster for books that I like well enough to finish, but not 100% liking. For some books I really like, I may end up listening to them two or more times - so it is not all about saving time. Yesterday, I was 3 hours into a 12 hour book and I was not loving it but wanted to enjoy the ending so I skipped forward to just the last two hours. Even though I am mostly retired, I find there is not time enough for much of what I would like to do. My personal best strategy for getting time back is learning how to enjoy just the first few episodes of streaming video series, and then stopping unless I really love the series. One last thing on the subject of using time effectively: I find that the recall from reading some books I really loved is far from perfect. My wife and I subscribe to the Blinkist service, and I find a really good use of time is to occasionally read (or listen) to a 15 minute summary of a previously read book and then spend another 5 minutes thinking about the book.

TurkeyTurtle 4y ago

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mattferderer 4y ago

Semi-related, check out Snipd for podcasts. As a former 2x podcast & audible listener, I prefer there style of consumption. I can still listen at a reasonable 1.5x (or faster if you wish). They have transcriptions you can use to read along or use to create notes. For popular podcasts you can review a list of snippets people saved. It's easy to share your snippets with friends, note & storage apps. I would love to see a version of this for books and audio books. I do know that you can buy both the written & audio books & then use one of many review or summary websites to compare & see what other people have taken from the book. But it would nice to see this all in one app. For podcasts, Snipd has set the bar for the time being.

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manmal 4y ago
VoiceOver on mobile OSes can output at a speed that I personally can’t comprehend. It seems there are indeed people who can.
cush 4y ago
Here's a video of blind person programming with Visual Studio using a screen reader. It reads so fast the words come out to me like mumbles or almost a buzzing sound https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc&t=42s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc&t=42s
- RobMurray 4y ago
  I have my screen reader faster than that video most of the time, and I know some other blind people who can understand it much faster. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can try the robotic sounding voice used in the video, which is also the one I use with my screen reader. It is called eloquence. I can understand voiceover with eloquence at 85%, but have my phone set to 75% most of the time so that I can hear it in a noisy environment.

SappyHippo 4y ago

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hutattedonmyarm 4y ago

I'm a big fan of removing silences and speeding up podcasts, but I rarely do it for audio books. But hey, if it makes people happy, why not!

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hombre_fatal 4y ago
This account is a bot that makes banal comments.

QueenBean 4y ago

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hombre_fatal 4y ago
This is another bot.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Thanks, I flagged this and the other one you mentioned. Do you know if that's the right way to bring these to dang's attention?

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thornewolf 4y ago

I'm one of those people who is obsessed with viewing or listening to content more quickly. I've managed to push to 2.8x on video and 3-3.5x on audio depending on content.

specialist 4y ago

My future perfect podcast player would - transcribe - automunge that transcription - remove "ah", "um" etc - remove repeated phrases [0] - optionally summarize [1] - stitch the surviving segments back into continuous audio - match words-per-minute between the speakers [2] - do all the "smartspeed" stuff that Fastbook and Overcast.app do [0] Notable example: Scott Galloway of The Pivot adopted the affection of repeating phrases for emphasis. Drives me batty. [1] No shade, because I understand it's a chat and not scripted, but Accidental Tech Podcast could benefit from summarization. I love that they're talking stuff out. But sometimes I just want the conclusions. [2] Like when Lex Fridman interviews someone who talks faster than him.

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shartshooter 4y ago

I stopped listening to audiobooks and podcasts at faster speeds because I found myself rushing when speaking. It's like it recalibrated my set communicating speed, in a bad way. I've switched back to 1x, which felt painfully slow at first, but it's helped me slow down and think more. YMMV

algog 4y ago

This reminds me of a joke from Woody Allen. He learned to speed read "War And Peace". When asked what's the book about? He said, "Russia".

glial 4y ago

Just to add to the chorus: some books need to be slowed down to follow. I find books like Paradise Lost, Blood Meridian, or even Sherlock Holmes are almost impossible to follow at normal speed.

Tagbert 4y ago

I do use the similar feature in the Overcast Podcast Player for most podcasts where the story telling is not important but for audio books, I’m more about the experience of the book. I could just read it but an audiobook is more enveloping.

the_omegist 4y ago

I got into the trap of wanting to read more , hence faster, thinking I wold gain more knowledge that way. After a couple of years I realized : - most modern books just don't worth the time spent reading them : a simple summary would do and often doesn't bring anything new anyway - the rare books worth reading require time to be processed (for essays) or to get immersed (for novels). So such apps solve a false dichotomy, in my opinion. But it can be useful as an "improved podcasts" maker. For the audiobooks I was making, I used this app which is great and highly customizable (speed, pauses time, export in multiple formats, cut into chunks, ...) : balabolka[1] [1] http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm