Speed Up Your Audio Learning

Audio books are a great way to learn new material. You can listen to them everywhere and all the time.

But what if you could speed up the time you spend on listening to audio books. That way you could listen to more audio books in the same amount of time. Just imagine listening to audio books at four times the original speed. That way you can listen to four times as much audio books compared to now.

I easily get distracted while listening to audio books, especially if the narrator is talking at a very low tempo. I talk fast myself and I like to listen to someone who keeps a decent pace. I’ve noticed I get more involved if I speed it up. My mind wanders less in different directions.

How do you speed the audio up? You don’t want to listen to the voice of some cartoon character, while you were expecting James Earl Jones. Most modern media players allow you to play the audio at higher speeds, without altering the pitch. For instance, there are several plug-ins available for WinAMP with which you can speed up the playback without altering the pitch. Right now, I’m using the PaceMaker plug-in.

If your media player does not support this for cd’s or dvd’s, first rip it to your hard drive. You won’t have this problem with downloadable audio books, because they usually come in formats which you can easily speed up.

How much do you speed it up? First try it at twice the normal speed. If you go back to the original speed it will seem sloooowww. Your mind has adapted to the faster input rate. Try speeding it up a little and if you get used to a certain speed, speed it up a bit more. Of course, if the audio contains real-time listening exercises you can always go back to normal speed.

The sound can be a bit distorted if you speed it up more than a little, so my advice is to use headphones.

That’s it. Try it with the next audio book you listen to and adjust the speed to your liking.

Have fun!

Gerber