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:
“For myself and my loved ones, I want the heat, which comes at the speed of light. I don’t want to have to hang about for the blast, which idles along at the speed of sound.”
—Martin Amis (b. 1949)
“What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I have not had major experience of talking with people once pronounced brain-dead, but I think we could be safe in saying he did not have great zip.”
—Sir Howard Smith (b. 1919)