Slow down that track!

[E-waste]

Sometimes, it just seems a bit a too fast of a beat... The next time you play your favorite song, open it in a music program that offers pitch + speed options.

 

Audacity is a great app, just change playback speed and press the play butten next to the control.

 

VLC does this if you go into advanced and turn off time stretching.

 

Using Youtube or Spotify to change the speed of a song, or even a podcast slower with these two sources can make it harder to understand the words and more robotic.  Turning off time-stretching when reducing speed is like playing a tape or record slower.  No robotic audio, and if there is something menioned quickly on a podcast or song, slowing it down with lower pitch actually allows you to hear it normally without it sounding choppy.  It also can give a song a deeper bass, or just slow it down until it's just right.

 

What are some songs or artists you slow down regularly?

[E-waste]

B b b b BASS!  Let's get this thread THUMPING!

[TheLANguy]

Just saw your post in the chit chat thread about this.

This already happens to my cassettes, which I usually have to manually dial in the speed! Used to play some 45s at 33 rpm which never sounded that great.

For the sake of experimenting I gave it a shot with The Camera Eye and Something Happened On The Way To Heaven.

 

For The Camera Eye (a mostly instrumental rock song) changing -%10 made the power cords heavier but removed the impact of the higher notes. Most surprisingly was the way it changed Geddy's voice. I could see people who don't like his high singing voice preferring this. Something Happened On The Way To Heaven sounded bad at -%10 but sounded a bit better at -%5. I suppose this energetic song is probably not the best for slowing down.

[E-waste]

19 hours ago, TheLANguy said:

Most surprisingly was the way it changed Geddy's voice. I could see people who don't like his high singing voice preferring this

It's almost like thrash metal vocals of James Hetfield in some songs, especially the 2112 album.  The high pitch makes it very difficult to understand the lyrics in this album and I really have to think and process the vocals in my mind to make sense of what the words could be.  I guarentee no rush fans exist that can understand all the words just by listening, I don't think it's possible, but it sounds amazing!  Slowing the song just a bit does help hear the words, but when it's basically screaming, there's just no chance.

 

Dr John - right place wrong time sounds extremely similar slowing down by 17% and to me there isn't a noticable pitch shift in vocals.

[TheLANguy]

On 3/1/2024 at 11:46 AM, E-waste said:

It's almost like thrash metal vocals of James Hetfield in some songs, especially the 2112 album.

What speed do you play 2112? I am interested in what that sounds like.

Quote

The high pitch makes it very difficult to understand the lyrics in this album and I really have to think and process the vocals in my mind to make sense of what the words could be.  I guarentee no rush fans exist that can understand all the words just by listening, I don't think it's possible, but it sounds amazing!  Slowing the song just a bit does help hear the words, but when it's basically screaming, there's just no chance.

 

Dr John - right place wrong time sounds extremely similar slowing down by 17% and to me there isn't a noticable pitch shift in vocals.

As a Rush fan I can understand the lyrics, however I am happy to hear that people can enjoy the music however they choose to listen.

[E-waste]

Youtube, Windows media player, vlc, spotify and other programs offer playback speed, but it tries to match original pitch.  It sounds like half thr sound is missing when using this method.

 

Instead, audacity does it correctly, with a slider on the main toolbar.

 

VLC can do this too, but for some reason, the developer thought it best to hide the pitch adjustment effect inside the advanced menu, and not give any hints about it.  Go into the vlc advanced menu, and remove the checkmark from timestretch.

 

This works on all platforms, wherever vlc is available, including all smartphones.  So if this is not something you have spent much time with, give a couple weeks and you may find it nice to listen to some songs at a slower speed.

[E-waste]

If you have ever changed the playback speed on a computer and used a slower speed, you've heard the timestretch pitch matching effect.  It works incredibly well when increasing speed, like for a podcast (not something I do, but some people save hundreds of hours doing it), but slowing down is like a robot, a very distorted sound with gaps, pauses and other issues in the output.

 

Hearing this garbage, it's no wonder people never try a slower speed ever again, it sounds awful or annoying.  Well, VLC is basically the only cross-platform (desktops and smartphones on all major operating systems) that actually offers the option to just allow the pitch to go down with speed.

 

Aggravatingly, it's hidden away from the world inside the rarely visited advanced settings.  I only recently re-learned this option and I had trouble finding it, but learned about it only a few years ago and forgot.

 

I'm back at it though, and I just think it needs to be shouted from the rooftops, such an incredible feature extremely rare to find in a music program.

 

Vlc settings advanced.  Remove the checkmark for timestretch to be turned off.

 

Also save playback speed, by going to the audio submenu, and checking the box.

 

Start off slow, with minimal adjustments and test that a while, then as you adjust to the slower pace, keep trying slower settings.  At some point it is just way too slow, so once you find where that is for you, that's your range.  Find the speeds you enjoy for a particular song, and keep at it.  You will find songs you enjoy maybe even more or as much, at slightly slower speeds and it can bring a new experience you haven't gotten from the music you have probably heard for many years.

 

Would anyone be interested in a thread, similar to "what song are you listening to" but instead

 

What speed are you listening to, with what song?

 

You'll be quite surprised what you find once you give this a try for a while, and I'd like to not only spread the idea but also help learn what speeds others like for songs, to know if it is near the speed I choose.

[E-waste]

If you look on YT for slower uploads of very popular hip hop from the1990s, some of these videos have over 1,000,000 views, showing a large hidden demand for this style of playback.  I bet ZERO of those millions of viewers have the slightest clue that VLC media player can do the same thing, with a hidden option.

 

I bet 1 in 750,000 vlc users have any idea the timestretch (pitch-matching) effect can be turned off, as it is not explained anywhere, especially where would make the most sense, the playback speed slider!

 

The the multiple millions of people, uploaders and viewers, have no easy way to discover this feature unless they just happen to install vlc, and just happen to browse all the settings in audio, and then also advanced on mobile, to find this feature.

 

There is without a doubt a huge demand for this feature, but the people who are currently interested have no idea about this option.  We need to make a big deal about this somehow, so that millions of people can discover, to prove to the VLC developers that people are very interested in this feature that definitely needs improvement.

 

The slider should rename and clearly display the timestretch option.  I'd go as far to say it should auto-enable itself for slower speeds, and also up to about 5-10% and then turn off automatically after that.  This way, people don't have to hear the robotic effect ever when trying this feature, but still have the option visible.

 

I refuse to make a google account, (asks for phone number), so I need others help to spread the word of this vlc feature to these already interested youtubers.  If anyone is willing to help with this effort, not only myself, but those folks would greatly appreciate it too.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 minutes ago, E-waste said:

I refuse to make a google account, (asks for phone number)

i dont think you need to put a phone number as long as you make one on your phone btw

 

i made a few accounts and never linked em to my phone number or any other uneccesary shit they dont need to know like my house address or anything like that

[Sandbass]

46 minutes ago, E-waste said:

There is without a doubt a huge demand for this feature, but the people who are currently interested have no idea about this option.  We need to make a big deal about this somehow, so that millions of people can discover, to prove to the VLC developers that people are very interested in this feature that definitely needs improvement.

 

Verifying this rather interesting hypothesis could be a somewhat difficult endeavour. At least I do have my doubts about there being a huge demand. 

 

While it is true that tech-illiterate people might not be aware of all features VLC offers, maybe not even of VLC's existence itself, I'm pretty sure even those people have a preferred search engine which they would use to find out exactly this information, if they really really wanted to slow down songs of their own choice. 

Just another thought: how many people (especially tech-illiterates who aren't likely to use VLC) use PCs to listen to their locally stored music collection, instead of using a streaming app on some mobile device? 

 

No offence, but I would unterstand if the top priorities of VLC's dev-team are something else. Not to break your spirit - you making this post on a publicly available forum is a good start for people who look exactly for this kind of information, but a full-blown publicity campaign might be a wee bit too much IMHO. 

[Spotty]

Threads merged. Don't keep posting the same topic over and over again talking about how you like to listen to music played slow.

 

No spamming or non-constructive posts, including:

• Posting the same topic multiple times

[duncannah]

I like to play with the speed and pitch of the music I listen to quite often. It spices things up and I get to squeeze more out of the few tracks I enjoy (I'm quite picky.)

[E-waste]

21 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

i dont think you need to put a phone number as long as you make one on your phone btw

Then they DEFINITELY have your phone number, come on!  I have all the g domains blocks, and disable all their services that the system allows by default.  Not an option.

 

20 hours ago, Sandbass said:

Verifying this rather interesting hypothesis could be a somewhat difficult endeavour. At least I do have my doubts about there being a huge demand. 

Yeah, but there IS demand, that is established.  There are hundreds of youtube accounts (one person each I assume), so that is at minimum, 100 people.

 

Some of these songs slowed down receive one million views, if the song is popular enough.  So let's assume half those are repear views and say it's 500,000 people decided to watch / listen.

 

Now extrapolate how many of these slow down videos there are, I guess G won't give the API to perform such a complete search in one go, but that would solve it, and we could add up all the views, and being optomistic, divide by 3 or 4 for repeat views by the same people.  So, I guess I'll have to find a way to get a sample size, but I don't know the overall total, quite difficult indeed.

 

20 hours ago, Sandbass said:

While it is true that tech-illiterate people might not be aware of all features VLC offers, maybe not even of VLC's existence itself, I'm pretty sure even those people have a preferred search engine which they would use to find out exactly this information, if they really really wanted to slow down songs of their own choice. 

So what would be the search query?  Can we please test this, because this one seems like an easy science experiment, following the scientific method.  I'll start it, and you are welcome to also share your results.  Should I add my results here, or make a separate thread, it wouldn't take but a couple days to exhaust a bunch of similar search query and test various search engines, you wanna test your theory?

 

20 hours ago, Sandbass said:

Just another thought: how many people (especially tech-illiterates who aren't likely to use VLC) use PCs to listen to their locally stored music collection, instead of using a streaming app on some mobile device?

Yep, I think about this EVERY time a discuss this idea with others online, most people never, or have never downloaded a song in their entire life.  It's just at that time where if a person is under say... 25 or so, they've probably never used limewire or similar, or ripped a cd, and probably don't care to download their music, because then they'd have to pay for a service, or maybe they do, and still don't want to back up their music.  That's just where things are, and it's a bit strange to me.  No internet?  No music.

 

I guess with starlink it just doesn't matter anymore, Internet for the whole globe.  I do think local storage is best, 100%, but I guess most people could literally not possibly care less at all.

 

But, for the people that are interested in this, the only way, for now to do this is locally, and these youtube account members have the copies (probably not paid for) of the music they like, and may want to try various speeds, so it would be reaching the right crowd.  Also, sometimes these accounts have contact information like a soundcloud, or an email, or a twitter, so they can learn about this feature.  With twitter, I could tag some keywords, and if done enough, maybe it goes trending, but that seems quite difficult to do, if not disallowed by the code from a single account.

 

This is an effort that will surely take several years, and it will be slow going at first.  Maybe once at least 100 of these accounts are contacted, they can pick up the remaining ones they find, and it will keep going.

 

I'm testing SEO for media players, playback speed and not sure how to word timestretch, because NOBODY will use that term, so I have no idea how anyone will find it.  First they'd have to learn that most programs use timestretch, or else, how do you know what to search for to find a program thay allows turning it off?