• Speed of speech

    From Pamela@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 2 18:14:17 2023
    Is it my imagination or do the presenters on Talk Radio/Talk TV (and
    sometimes GB News) sometimes speak much faster than normal?

    It's almost as if the programme is pre-recorded and played back at a
    faster speed. Or perhaps the studio tells the presents to talk at top
    speed.

    Just wondering.

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  • From Brian Gaff@21:1/5 to Pamela on Fri Feb 3 10:34:04 2023
    It is most certainly digitally doable to make anyone speak faster if its recorded. Its done by missing out some samples and shortening gaps between words. Blind people have their speech cranked up quite often so the average person could never under stand it. In my view doing that to a narrator of
    some audio book is surely removing the natural sound, but each to their own.
    I remember the first place I encountered this was in Tandy many years ago, they had a tape recorder that could change the speech speed without changing the voice pitch. I'm not sure how they did this back then, but I'd imaging
    it used some kind of digital processing as you speeded the tapes up.
    Brian

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    "Pamela" <pamela.private.mailbox@gmail.com> wrote in message news:XnsAF9FB9879F08637B93@88.198.57.247...
    Is it my imagination or do the presenters on Talk Radio/Talk TV (and sometimes GB News) sometimes speak much faster than normal?

    It's almost as if the programme is pre-recorded and played back at a
    faster speed. Or perhaps the studio tells the presents to talk at top
    speed.

    Just wondering.

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  • From NY@21:1/5 to Brian Gaff on Fri Feb 3 14:46:48 2023
    On 03/02/2023 10:34, Brian Gaff wrote:
    It is most certainly digitally doable to make anyone speak faster if its recorded. Its done by missing out some samples and shortening gaps between words. Blind people have their speech cranked up quite often so the average person could never under stand it. In my view doing that to a narrator of some audio book is surely removing the natural sound, but each to their own.
    I remember the first place I encountered this was in Tandy many years ago, they had a tape recorder that could change the speech speed without changing the voice pitch. I'm not sure how they did this back then, but I'd imaging
    it used some kind of digital processing as you speeded the tapes up.

    I would have thought that the only way you could correct for higher
    pitch with speeded up audio, before the days of digital processing,
    would be to pitch-shift by modulating with a low frequency - which would
    be tolerable for speech but would make music sound obnoxious because the harmonic relationships would be destroyed.

    I'm amazed as how good digital processing is in players such as VLC. I
    tend to watch recorded programmes at about 1.3 to 1.5x normal, and music
    as well as speech sounds fine. Only when you get up to about 1.7 to 2x
    does it start to sound rather nasty.

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  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to Brian Gaff on Fri Feb 3 22:44:25 2023
    Brian Gaff <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote:

    [...].
    I remember the first place I encountered this was in Tandy many years ago, they had a tape recorder that could change the speech speed without changing the voice pitch. I'm not sure how they did this back then, but I'd imaging
    it used some kind of digital processing as you speeded the tapes up.

    It goes back a lot further than that: During WWII the Germans had a magnetophone that could speed up and slow down sound without changing
    the pitch, it was used for 'secrecy' when sending messages over a
    limited bandwidth radio link.

    It worked by having four heads on a rotating drum which ran either in
    the same direction as the tape or in the opposite direction, depending
    on whether you wanted to speed up or slow down the sound. The heads
    were commutated as the drum went round.

    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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  • From Pamela@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 15 14:12:41 2023
    On 14:46 3 Feb 2023, NY said:

    On 03/02/2023 10:34, Brian Gaff wrote:
    It is most certainly digitally doable to make anyone speak faster
    if its recorded. Its done by missing out some samples and shortening
    gaps between words. Blind people have their speech cranked up quite
    often so the average person could never under stand it. In my view
    doing that to a narrator of some audio book is surely removing the
    natural sound, but each to their own.
    I remember the first place I encountered this was in Tandy many
    years ago,
    they had a tape recorder that could change the speech speed without
    changing the voice pitch. I'm not sure how they did this back then,
    but I'd imaging it used some kind of digital processing as you
    speeded the tapes up.

    I would have thought that the only way you could correct for higher
    pitch with speeded up audio, before the days of digital processing,
    would be to pitch-shift by modulating with a low frequency - which
    would be tolerable for speech but would make music sound obnoxious
    because the harmonic relationships would be destroyed.

    I'm amazed as how good digital processing is in players such as VLC.
    I tend to watch recorded programmes at about 1.3 to 1.5x normal, and
    music as well as speech sounds fine. Only when you get up to about
    1.7 to 2x does it start to sound rather nasty.

    Your 1.3 to 1.5x normal is much faster than I find comfortable. 1.25x is
    my limit but I prefer 1.1x although it's hardly enough to make any saving
    of elapsed time.

    Conversely ... I find slowing down a podcast (or whatever) is okay down to about 0.8 to 0.9x but no slower.

    Perhaps there's considerable variation between listeners.

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  • From Pamela@21:1/5 to Liz Tuddenham on Wed Feb 15 14:14:30 2023
    On 22:44 3 Feb 2023, Liz Tuddenham said:
    Brian Gaff <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote:

    [...].

    I remember the first place I encountered this was in Tandy many
    years ago,
    they had a tape recorder that could change the speech speed without
    changing the voice pitch. I'm not sure how they did this back then,
    but I'd imaging it used some kind of digital processing as you
    speeded the tapes up.

    It goes back a lot further than that: During WWII the Germans had a magnetophone that could speed up and slow down sound without changing
    the pitch, it was used for 'secrecy' when sending messages over a
    limited bandwidth radio link.

    It worked by having four heads on a rotating drum which ran either in
    the same direction as the tape or in the opposite direction,
    depending on whether you wanted to speed up or slow down the sound.
    The heads were commutated as the drum went round.

    That sounds rather clever for the (historical) time.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems L@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 15 17:19:00 2023
    It worked by having four heads on a rotating drum which ran
    either in the same direction as the tape or in the opposite
    direction, depending on whether you wanted to speed up or slow
    down the sound. The heads were commutated as the drum went
    round.

    That sounds rather clever for the (historical) time.

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay radio phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the tape looped between them.

    Electronic delays were probably not until the late seventies when analogue to digital conversion and memory became economic.

    Angus

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  • From Max Demian@21:1/5 to Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems L on Thu Feb 16 11:52:49 2023
    On 15/02/2023 17:19, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

    It worked by having four heads on a rotating drum which ran
    either in the same direction as the tape or in the opposite
    direction, depending on whether you wanted to speed up or slow
    down the sound. The heads were commutated as the drum went
    round.

    That sounds rather clever for the (historical) time.

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay radio phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the tape looped between them.

    That's different, as the whole programme is delayed by a fixed amount.
    Not the same as speeding up speech without affecting the pitch.

    --
    Max Demian

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  • From Mark Carver@21:1/5 to Max Demian on Thu Feb 16 12:23:34 2023
    On 16/02/2023 11:52, Max Demian wrote:
    On 15/02/2023 17:19, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

    It worked by having four heads on a rotating drum which ran
    either in the same direction as the tape or in the opposite
    direction, depending on whether you wanted to speed up or slow
    down the sound. The heads were commutated as the drum went
    round.

    That sounds rather clever for the (historical) time.

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay radio
    phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the
    tape looped
    between them.

    That's different, as the whole programme is delayed by a fixed amount.
    Not the same as speeding up speech without affecting the pitch.

    The digital profanity delay systems actually do that (or rather slow
    down without affecting the pitch) to get into a 10 second linear delay.

    'Back in the day' radio stations had to play a 10 second jingle, to fill
    the gap between live and delayed output.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Max Demian@21:1/5 to Mark Carver on Thu Feb 16 16:36:53 2023
    On 16/02/2023 12:23, Mark Carver wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 11:52, Max Demian wrote:
    On 15/02/2023 17:19, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay radio >>> phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the
    tape looped
    between them.

    That's different, as the whole programme is delayed by a fixed amount.
    Not the same as speeding up speech without affecting the pitch.

    The digital profanity delay systems actually do that (or rather slow
    down without affecting the pitch) to get into a 10 second linear delay.

    'Back in the day' radio stations had to play a 10 second jingle, to fill
    the gap between live and delayed output.

    If the whole programme is delayed, what gap is there?

    --
    Max Demian

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  • From Mark Carver@21:1/5 to Max Demian on Thu Feb 16 19:35:14 2023
    On 16/02/2023 16:36, Max Demian wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 12:23, Mark Carver wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 11:52, Max Demian wrote:
    On 15/02/2023 17:19, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay
    radio
    phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the
    tape looped
    between them.

    That's different, as the whole programme is delayed by a fixed
    amount. Not the same as speeding up speech without affecting the pitch.

    The digital profanity delay systems actually do that (or rather slow
    down without affecting the pitch) to get into a 10 second linear delay.

    'Back in the day' radio stations had to play a 10 second jingle, to
    fill the gap between live and delayed output.

    If the whole programme is delayed, what gap is there?

    At the start of the programme of course. If the preceding programme is
    live, you have to fill the gap before jumping to the delayed content.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Mark Carver@21:1/5 to Mark Carver on Thu Feb 16 19:37:19 2023
    On 16/02/2023 19:35, Mark Carver wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 16:36, Max Demian wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 12:23, Mark Carver wrote:
    On 16/02/2023 11:52, Max Demian wrote:
    On 15/02/2023 17:19, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

    Even 50 years ago the essentially same technique was used to delay
    radio
    phone-ins by a few seconds, two tape recorders in a rack with the
    tape looped
    between them.

    That's different, as the whole programme is delayed by a fixed
    amount. Not the same as speeding up speech without affecting the
    pitch.

    The digital profanity delay systems actually do that (or rather slow
    down without affecting the pitch) to get into a 10 second linear delay.

    'Back in the day' radio stations had to play a 10 second jingle, to
    fill the gap between live and delayed output.

    If the whole programme is delayed, what gap is there?

    At the start of the programme of course. If the preceding programme is
    live, you have to fill the gap before jumping to the delayed content.
    Have a read

    https://www.sonifex.co.uk/redbox/rbpd2_ld.shtml

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