Have you done that successfully for any book? I've never tried, but it seems likely to me to be very difficult, unless you happen to read at exactly the narrator's pace.
Most audio players these days have an option to listen to the media at higher speeds. Through some FFT magic, I think, the tone doesn't go up either; it's just faster. I watch most of my YT vids at ~2x now and most podcasts are at ~1.8x. It can be a bit jarring at first, but you get used to it really fast.
> Most audio players these days have an option to listen to the media at higher speeds. Through some FFT magic, I think, the tone doesn't go up either; it's just faster. I watch most of my YT vids at ~2x now and most podcasts are at ~1.8x. It can be a bit jarring at first, but you get used to it really fast.
I may be protesting too much, since, as I say, I've never tried it. But this seems like a solution to the problem where the narrator's reading speed is a fixed percentage of your reading speed, whereas I have in mind the way that I read, which is that I might go very quickly through some sections that don't need or to which I don't want to pay detailed attention, and then slow way down in the more difficult sections. I think it is fairly rare for audiobook narrators to approach the book this way (but maybe they do it so seamlessly I don't notice?).
I'm not sure about YT, but my podcast app allows for me to map the left earbud's +/- buttons for volume and the right earbud's for playback speed. I can go slower or faster depending on how much I want to listen to a section. What I can't do is map a rewind button, which can be tough if I fast forward through something and miss and want to go back.