Speed Hearing & Speed Talking
For the specific case of speech, time stretching can be performed using PSOLA.
Time stretching can be used with audio books and recorded lectures. Slowing down may improve comprehension of foreign languages .
While one might expect speeding up to reduce comprehension, Herb Friedman says that "Experiments have shown that the brain works most efficiently if the information rate through the ears--via speech--is the "average" reading rate, which is about 200-300 wpm (words per minute), yet the average rate of speech is in the neighborhood of 100-150 wpm."
Speeding up audio is seen as the equivalent of "speed reading" .
Time stretching is often used to adjust Radio commercials and the audio of Television advertisements to fit exactly into the 30 or 60 seconds available.
Read more about this topic: Audio Timescale-pitch Modification
Famous quotes containing the words speed, hearing and/or talking:
“The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man’s adjustment to it—the speed of his acceptance.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“We can say that the sound is the primary object of the act of hearing, and that the act of hearing itself is the secondary object.”
—Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917)
“It’s no use of talking unless people understand what you say.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)