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Comment by anonytrary | Hacker News Reader

> you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.75-2X normal speech

Try 5-6x. I've met some blind people who listen to audio so fast, it sounds like noise to me. As someone who isn't blind, I regularly listen to lectures and audiobooks on 1.75-2.5x (depending on the base rate) without issues, but 6x is just something else entirely.

> Typos will be easily spotted as they just won't "sound right".

Really good way to describe this. It's almost like listening to an audio fingerprint which magically indexes the answer in your brain. My blind friend was doing law, but I'm sure she did something similar to help her map the dependencies between laws.

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> Try 5-6x. I've met some blind people who listen to audio so fast, it sounds like noise to me. As someone who isn't blind, I regularly listen to lectures and audiobooks on 1.75-2.5x (depending on the base rate) without issues, but 6x is just something else entirely.

Yes, indeed. I was writing that original comment for someone just getting started. What ends up happening is no matter how fast the speech rate is, you'll eventually get used to it and your brain will grow impatient. So you'll bump the rate up another 0.25 and rinse and repeat. Pretty soon it's incomprehensible to anyone but you.

I'm pretty sure anyone can get used to 2X+ without much effort. After a while you'll wonder how you ever listened to speech at a normal rate. Be careful, though, as I've found myself grow impatient listening to people in real life and can trace it back to my high-speed listening habits.

Does it affect listening to music? Does it also trigger the impatience?

I'm not blind but I do like to listen to podcasts, YouTube, etc at 1.5-3x and I've certainly caught myself getting annoyed at how long it takes to listen to a new album I want to check out, but I've never tried to speed it up, I just remember to relax and enjoy it.

When I listen to audiobooks or podcasts, I can easily bump up the speed by 25% until I hit 2x. Faster, depending on the reader and the type of book. If it's a good non-fiction reader like Edward Herrmann, I can go faster. If it's a fiction book with an expressive reader using accents and emoting, I sometimes can't get beyond 1.5.

Some content is even improved by being sped up. Doubling the speed made me enjoy cartalk again. Having to constantly wait through multiple seconds of hacking laughter was breaking the flow.

> My blind friend was doing law, but I'm sure she did something similar to help her map the dependencies between laws.

Nobody calls them dependencies, but yes, you would be able to hear if `Re Estates Croft, deceased [2018] NSWSC 1303` were wrong.

i'm sighted and super adhd. i run my kindle at 4x. its super annoying because they speed the words but not the spaces. half a god damn sentence could go by during their spaces

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