I’m looking for pc software to play back an audio CD book at an adjustable speed. it needs to work on an ordinary audio CD, not an MP3. TIA.
I don’t understand. A Cd is not an analogue source. It’s digital. Slowing down the physical drive won’t actually slow down the playback.
So if I get what you are asking for right, you want to take that data stream and dynamically (and in real time) slow it down?
Is there a particular reason you can’t rip the CD to mp3 or wav and then slow it down? 'caus eI can help there. There’s gotta be a hundred free apps that will slow it down.
I use a moderately expensive (to me) software program for audio recording, Adobe Audition,which has this capability. I suspect there are many others. Audacity is a fairly decent and free program that may include this feature. Not sure as I don’ use it, but there’s a start anyway.
Sorry for the brief OP; I was typing on a PDA with a stylus, and every character is painful.
I have a set of audio CD books. The narration is too fast for the complexity of the material. Imagine a radio advertising announcer explaining particle physics. If I could drop the speed 5-15% without lowering the pitch, that’d be perfect.
That’s my goal.
Yes, I know audio CDs are digital and the solution isn’t to slow the platter rotation, but rather to buffer the data stream at later point. And reprocess it to provide pitch stabilization so slower speed doesn’t cause lower pitch.
I don’t really use any modern computer-based audio stuff. Sticking a store-bought analog(ue) CD in the car’s analog(ue) CD player is as sophisticated as I’ve gotten. Nothing against all the newer stuff; I just haven’t had the need. Until now.
So I’m looking for practical suggestions for software that could do playback like I want. If I have to rip to MP3, wav, etc., as an intermediate step, I can figure out how to do that easily enough. But I’m still looking for recomendations for playback software, regardless of format.
If playback direct from CDA *is *available, that seems to me to be an advantage: one less step to mess with. But there may be technical reasons it isn’t practical, or works much worse or …
The technical problem is trivial. The practical problem is that the extreme popularity of all sorts of music-related anything means Google is effectively flooded with “buy music here you fan-boy teens”, and downloading & installing potentially dozens of different free- / share- / malware tools to find one that works well is unattractive.
Hence my request for specific recommendations for specific software packages. I already *know *there are hundreds out there. Thousands in fact. It’s the picking *one *of them that I’m asking for help with.
Thanks again for the insights so far and to the posters yet to throw in.
I have a dictation tape recorder that can play back at differtent speeds. It digitally elongates the recoding to do this. It can also alter the pitch of the playback. If a tape recorder bought ten years ago can do this, I find it had to believe that we can’ get some software to do this on our comuters.
Okay, I fired up Audacity. There’s a “transcription toolbar” that has a slider to change playback speed, but changing playback speed also adjusts pitch.
Beat me to it. Audacity is an excellent free tool that can do almost anything you need to sounds.
The technical problem isn’t really that trivial, actually; the best mass-market consumer option for a straight-up playback of CD with speed control with pitch-correction might be one of those Tascam units for maybe 100-150 bucks or so (don’t have the model on hand, but I’ve heard some pretty positive things about them). These types of devices are designed for musicians who want to slow down some kind of fast passage and learn it – a step up from the old days of slowing down an LP or playing back the open-reel tape players on a slower speed.
I use software called “Transcribe!” pretty nearly everyday as part of my regular music practice routine – mostly because I like the software, without always needing to slow things down. I’d go with something like that or a freeware alternative and burn some new CDs of your source with the speed where you want it. (Obvious point, but don’t encode the tracks to mp3 or something before transforming – keep it all lossless before possibly compressing as the final stage).
There is going to be pretty serious degradation of the audio quality, all kinds of artifacts whose acceptability will depend on how picky you are – it’s just not a hi-fi technology at this point, and probably won’t be for a good long time.
One way to slow it down without reducing pitch is to widen gaps.
In a sound editor like Sound Forge you can manually paste in white space but that’s not practical for a book. There will be some automated way to do double or treble gaps, probably using free tools.
Can Audacity automatically split tracks as it is recording, and if so can you minimise the trigger quiet period?
It is easiest though just to drop the speed and the pitch 15%, the voice will still be undertandable if somewhat peculiar.