Listen to podcasts at high speed

You could also open the file with djay.app which will allow you to both increase the speed and then adjust the pitch back to normal.

Have a nice day!

Here's my Automator workflow for converting mp3 podcast files to m4b (audiobook) files.
It's ugly, but it works for me.

http://homepage.mac.com/davemail/d/PodcastConverter.jpg

There seems to be a glitch in Quicktime's audio speed-up that I've been complaining about for some time now to no avail. If you've ever used other speed-up products like 2xAV (for windows), you would see (hear) that you can actually understand speech at 2x or even 3x in some cases. However, in Quicktime it's totally incomprehensible at around 2x. This is because Quicktime's speed-up seems to introduce an echo in the sound which, while fairly unnoticeable at 1.5x or so, makes sounds incomprehensible at higher speeds. Most people assume it's just that fast talk sounds like gibberish, but it's not so: it's a problem with Quicktime. Apple doesn't seem to care though.

spil: Thanks! although I'm really an old hand around here, back from a long vacation at another blog.

henry: As I said "without converting all his podcasts to audiobooks". The iTunes/iPod will only adjust speed for .m4b files. That means first converting all your mp3 files to ACC, and then renaming all your acc files *.m4b. For many people, that will take ~10 minutes per hour of audio, longer on a G3. The quickTime approach should take less than a minute per file.

but he's reffering to podcasts, not audiobooks, henryaj.

There's an option to do this on your iPod; just go to Settings > Audiobooks and you can choose to speed up or slow down audiobooks (and presumably podcasts, by extension) by 25% without affecting the pitch.

Welcome to TUAW, Jay.

I'm I the only person who doesnt like podcasts?

"Sounds to me like a job for Automator."

exactly.