There are no speed limit in podcasting

February 20, 2015 18:32 EST • Alexandre Vallières-Lagacé • 2 minute read

An article made the rounds this week about wether or not you should speed up your podcast playback. Like movies and TV shows, the content creator might have included pauses and used a certain tempo in his dialogue that we should respect. Or not.

There are no speed limit in podcasting.

— Me

Or as a certain Marco put it, listen to podcasts at whatever speed you want. I can relate as I’ve listen to various quality of podcast over the years, and also various types of podcasts. Some are prepared, some are just a guy walking speaking in his iPhone earbuds, some are scripted and some are voice-acted. And sometimes the podcast speaks so fast that anything above 1x is actually hard to understand.

It all depends on what you are listening to in the end. All podcast benefit from a Smart Speed feature as the one in Overcast, but not all preserve their dramatic effect if you increase the speed on top of Smart Speed.

Also, if you listen to 2 podcasts you have way more room in your listening week than if you listen to 20 podcasts. Therefore, you do what you want, in the end it’s your ears. And your habits will change over time.

I listen to everything with Smart Speed on, and I add on top from 1.5x to 2x depending on the podcast. Sadly Overcast does not tell me how many hours of my life I saved while having it on, but it can be counted in the 20-30 hours easily.