Listening to podcasts at 2X speed?

[madphilosopher]

I have a Sharp MD-SR60 minidisc recorder (http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sharp_MD-MT50+SR50+SR60+SR70+SR75.html) which has the following cool feature: if you record audio in mono format, you can play it back at twice the speed, but not frequency shifted. It does this by playing only half the recorded samples. I found this useful for when I had to review radio talk shows. I could listen to a one-hour show in 30 minutes and still understand what was being said. (Music sounds terrible though.)

Anyway, this might be useful for listening to podcasts, especially when you have a large number of them to go through in one sitting. So I want to know if anyone knows of any mp3 playing software/hardware that has this playback-at-2X feature. I know audio editors can do this, but I want a simple 2X play button.

Thanks.

[sydbarrett]

As for software, a free media player called JetAudio. Click open right panel and you can change speed from 50% to 200% or 2X.

[GSmith]

I use BetaPlayer on a Pocket PC. It has speed options of 200% 150% 120% 110% 100% 90% 80% 50% 25% 10%.

No pitch shifting, but I usually listen to podcasts at 120%, 150%, and sometimes at 200%. Most often at 150%.

[justme]

The Ipod does this also. If you convert your tracks to AAC and then change the extension from .m4a to .m4b you can select "faster" or "slower" on the ipod. Doppler automatically converts mp3 podcasts to AAC and changes the extension. The change in extension also enables bookmarking.

[WyethDigital]

IPodderX for the Mac also converts tracks to the bookmarkable AAC files. It handles changing the extensions for you, as well. It should be noted that this process (converting MP3 files to AAC) adds time to the process of downloading Podcasts to your MP3 Player. If you have a lot of Podcasts that you listen to, you'll need to allow a fair amount of extra time for downloading and processing. How much extra time pretty much depends on the speed of your system.

Eric

[mmbhg]

Sound Explorer from Vito Technologies for the PPC does 0.5x to 2X
its a good recorder too. I use FeederReader.com (PPC) to catch the casts.
regard Brian Greene

http://radio.wxtc.net