What's your preferred playback speed: 1x, 1.5x or 2x?

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/08/13/whats-your-preferred-playback-speed-1x-15x-or-2x

by petethomas • 11 months ago

19 25 11 months ago

It’s highly dependent on what I’m viewing, of course. Some people just… talk… so… slooowly. If the content is interesting then they get 1.5x. Some people talk a mile a minute with dense information and they get 1x. For myself, 2x is usually too fast to be enjoyable.

mdaniel2• 11 months ago

My experience has been that it's not just the cadence of the speaker, it can be their intonation and pitch that determines whether I can speed it up. And some deep voiced person from Essex who is recording in their bathroom ... not a prayer, because I can't find the word boundaries from the background noise

Scoundreller• 11 months ago

This is the problem: the settings should let you specify an absolute rate like average words or phonemes per minute.

Maybe some coefficient of word/thought complexity.

Not a relative multiple of the base rate. Garbage in, garbage out and all.

rsyring• 11 months ago

Depends on how fast the person in the video is talking. Sometime I can listen as is. If they are talking really slow, maybe 1.75x.

Usually 2x is too fast for me but, I may go that fast if I'm "skimming" for interesting content. Then I'll slow it down.

SilverElfin• 11 months ago

1.25x minimum. 2x is doable. But not fun.

phillipseamore• 11 months ago

98% of the time I want it faster. I don't use arbitrary speeds but rather overshoot what I think I need (which could be based on the pace of the speaker or the time I have available) and then after a minute go down to the target speed (and sometimes rewind back to the start). Overshooting (2x) for 30/90s while wanting 1.5x will make it much easier to listen at just about any speed up to 2.5/3x.

mdaniel2• 11 months ago

On the off chance you were not already aware, those presets are just that. document.querySelectorAll("video").forEach(el => el.playbackRate = 3.0) but, as that snippet implies, one needs either an extension or access to the dev tools to pull it off

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/media.html#dom-media-...

I also learned about https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/media.html#dom-media-... while digging up that link

Be aware that MDN reports playbackRate over 4.0 gets its audio muted https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaEl...

nlawalker• 11 months ago

“Transcript” :)

zahlman• 11 months ago

This is an inadequate workaround anyway. You can generally read faster than you can process spoken language. But even more importantly, most of what's usually making the video so long is actual padding of the content.

I don't just want to reduce the time I spend listening to the presenter blather on about irrelevant stuff. I want to reduce the amount of irrelevant stuff the presenter blathers on about.

apothegm2• 11 months ago

This. So much this.

But also 2x even without fluff — unless the content is technical enough and unfamiliar enough that I need to slow down to absorb it. Or the person talks like the micromachines man.

netsharc• 11 months ago

Having SponsorBlock and making myself be an unpaid editor to cut out the lameeee jokes the YouTuber thinks he needs to make is a satisfactory thing...

I remember opening a Linus Tech Tips video and the scrollbar was very very colorful because someone was very keen on marking all the bits they deemed irrelevant (the color signifies the category, e.g. sponsorship, calls to action like "Like and subscribe!", irrelevant content)

tim3332• 11 months ago

You can often skip around to the good bit or text search to get there. I often copy and paste the youtube transcript into a text editor.

jonahbenton• 11 months ago

Old people also want faster!

1.4x or 1.5x, depending on recording quality, setting in which I am listening, and speaker clarity.

2x is ok for skimming/reviewing material.

For a couple of podcasts that I really enjoy, will keep it to 1.0x, but still with silence trimming.

lubujackson• 11 months ago

1.8x is about right for me, especially if there are subtitles available. I use a browser plugin that allows fine-tuning on almost all video sites.

apothegm2• 11 months ago

That sounds useful. What’s the plugin?

tim3332• 11 months ago

I use this one https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-speed-control...

works quite well

TheAceOfHearts• 11 months ago

It depends on the kind of content and information density. My default playback speed is usually 2x, unless the content requires deep focus and thought. For basic fantasy novels I might go up to 3x or 3.5x, unless the author uses a lot of symbolic or complex language. For example: listening to a Gene Wolf audiobook, I don't think I'd be able to really appreciate the full breadth of his writing at anything over 1.5x.

Most modern media just isn't very deep nor trying to layer a lot of interesting symbolism; if it's fairly one-dimensional / one-layered then you can blast through anything at 2x or 3x.

In the modern social media era, it feels like sometimes video content is filled with as much stuff as possible, like with the average MrBeast video, but it's mostly sausage. None of it has any deep meaning nor does it build up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

quantumcotton• 11 months ago

Lex Friedman gets 4x. Terrance Tao at .5x It depends.

mikhailfranco• 11 months ago

But Lex interviewed Terry!

Maybe a voice-recognizing silence-skipping adaptive rate.

Loranubi• 11 months ago

Didn't read the paywalled article. But imo if it's not worth listening at 1x speed, it's not worth listening at all.

If it's entertainment like audiobooks, it's for my enjoyment, so why should it be faster than 1x? If it's for education, everything faster than 1x makes it hard to understand, and if there is too much filler content, I will find another source to learn about it.

I use 1.5x-2x for stuff I have to listen too, but don't enjoy.

sneak• 11 months ago

2x almost always; if they talk fast, 1.75x. if they talk slow, i use an extension to go to 3x.

naruhodo• 11 months ago

My listening speed has gone up over time, with practice.

tonyedwardspz• 11 months ago

O.9x

jhy• 11 months ago

"O", you're on a typewriter! :)

poulpy123• 11 months ago

Lmao just just put some white noise at this point

What's your preferred playback speed: 1x, 1.5x or 2x?

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