Change music playback speed?

NaN · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:40 pm Post subject: Change music playback speed?

I'm looking for a simple way to adjust the playback speed of music (mp3), preferably using a half decent playlist/library manager/player. (I'm presently using Amarok.) My wife runs a dance school for kids and when they're learning she'd like to play the music slower and then speed it back up to tempo as they become more profficient. Some CD players can do this but her school can't afford one right now, so I thought it should be easy to do using a PC! I only need to change the tempo from about -30% to +20% of nominal, but with quite fine control.

I've found transcribe (http://www.seventhstring.com/) which is a shareware application that can do what I want but it is a specialist tool and does not have any playlist management. At a pinch I could use it, but I was wondering whether there is anything more appropriate available.

Any suggestions?
Cheers
David.

NaN · Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject:

BTW there are several plug-ins to do this for Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=138562 and others).

Any Linux equivalents for any of the linux players? - I couldn't find one for xmms or audacious...

Coltie · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:36 am Post subject:

rezound does that, but it might not be really useful if you want to use a playlist or so...
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cyrillic · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure how to change the speed of mp3 playback, but it is easy to do with audio CDs.

Try this with cdda2wav. The -p controls the playback speed in percent.

suicidal_orange_II · Apprentice Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 299

alsa-player had this on a slider on the main window to adjust the speed when I last used it (a year or so back), I doubt anything has changed. While not the prettiest app it does support playlists and sounds perfect for this purpose

Suicidal_Orange

discomfitor · l33t Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 927 Location: None

If you use mplayer, you can use [ and ] to control playback speed of anything you're watching/listening to.
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NaN · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject:

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Unfortunately MPlayer changes the pitch when you change the speed and this is less than ideal, otherwise it would have been a good choice.

I can't find alsa-player - has it been removed from portage? Perhaps it is no longer maintained.

I've found that libsoundtouch supports tempo and pitch adjustments so I'd guess that most applications using the library should support the feature sooner or later. I've also found code for LADSPA that does the job, but it is not wrapped up as a convenient plug-in. If my wife is to use it in her dance class ease of use is a big advantage.

In the mean time the quest continues!
Thanks for all the suggestions,
David.