[AlbertCory]

I hired a voice actor, Maxwell Glick, to do the audiobooks for my two books (https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Big-Bucks/dp/B0BDBG5VNP/r... is the latest. Your speed is interesting, because when I was reviewing his work, I only used 1.5x. Any faster sounded like a cartoon character and I might miss nuances in the dialog, among other things.

Someone else mentioned code samples. Fortunately I only had a couple Mesa samples in Inventing the Future and I actually gave him some audio for the way to read them. My guideline was "how would a CS professor read this in class?"

There IS a "pronouncing Mesa" epilogue to the manual, which helped. But a book with a whole lot of code in it? I don't think that would work.

[peteforde]

The books I tend to listen to share two things in common: they are in English, and they don't have large code samples. I don't doubt that there are excellent non-fiction books with source code - heck, probably some fiction as well - but listening at any speed sounds like something I wouldn't do unless my eyes were disabled.

In addition to (good) earbuds and practice listening at higher speeds, I suspect that not all pitch correction algos are created equal. If you are simply speeding up audio without correcting for pitch, it's going to sound like a cartoon even at 1.25x.

However, the main thing is concentration. I do not perceive that the words are sped up, because I am very actively listening to it while doing wrote, repetitive things. I have to stop the audio if I'm doing anything that requires any attention, computation or decision making whatsoever.

Cooking soup? No problem. Following a recipe? NOPE. Picking up vegetables? Sure. Reading ingredients? Not a chance. Biking on a path? Sure. Driving? Not a chance.