iPhone Music Settings
[Note: Updated for iPhone 3.0 @ Accessing Audiobook Speed on iPhone 3.0]
Speeding up a recording used to make it sound like Alvin & the Chipmunks. Growing up, I had a cassette player for the blind that had a variable speed playback control. Being a kid, I used it mainly for entertainment value. Fun was had with friends making the narrators sound silly. Slide the bar up to get the fast, high-pitched tones of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Slide it down and you get slow, sonorous speech. I never used the cassette player much. It was more of a novelty. My sight was still good enough to read books without glasses even though I had to do it close up and with lots of eye strain and headaches. Those days are long over.
Now I rely much more on audio books. I have never learned to get along well with the cassette players designed for the blind. Instead, I listen mostly to books that I get from audible.com. In the early days, I listen to these books on a variety of MP3 players. At some point, though, I settled on and have stuck with Apple’s iPods. I had an early U2 iPod, then a succession of iPod nanos,and now I have the iPod Touch.
iPhone Audiobook Speed Settings
Apple has built their version of variable speed playback into their devices.Apple’s implementation, despite limited speed choice, has a great advantage over the older approach. Variable speed playback on the iPod does not have the Alvin and the chipmunks affect. There is no change in pitch when you change the speed. Increasing playback speed still takes some getting used to but it’s no longer quite so annoying.
The main limitation is the choice of speed. Apple only offers a choice of slower, normal and faster. Apparently, with enough time to acclimate yourself, you can get used to much higher speeds than what the iPod offers. Since I have to buy my audio books, this limitation is probably good for my budget.
Changing playback speeds is not as easy as it should be. Apple has buried the menu in the Music section of the iPod settings. Once you have navigated to the playback speed menu, it is quite easy to select your desired speed. However the choice is not book-specific nor is it easy to change on the fly. some books are more difficult than others at faster speeds. When I find myself wishing back and forth between different books, I often find myself having to switch their speeds as well.
All in all, it’s a great feature. It may take a few minutes to get used to, but you will soon be reading five books in the time you used to take you to read four.
Read more iPhone accessibility reviews here on my iPhone Access page.
If you find this post useful or interesting, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below. 
Hi,
if you want to use the speed control feature that is available in ALL ipods and the iphone, it only works for audiobooks and hang in there for a while,
you can convert your mp3s or any other format to “apple lossless audio” which produces a (.m4a) file, just rename the file extension to (.m4b) and the iphone/ipod will read it as an audiobook.
you can use dBpoweramp for conversions, cool stuff
hope you like it and keep the coffee until we meet.
Adios
I attempted this conversion and it’s HUGE but it becomes protected and I cannot drag the file into Audiobooks in iTunes on my Mac. Any other hints or simple step I am missing?
Thanks…
Morpheus
I am not sure, can you give me some more detail?
The new iPhone update left out the audio speed adjust ! I’m stuck on fast and can not make it normal !!! Help !!!
Don’t worry! They just moved the variable speed control from the unintuitive Settings App right to the audiobook playback page. Just tap to bring up the fast-forward/rewind bar. On the right, you will see the little button which switches between 1X, 2X and 1/2 X. Tap the 2X and it will switch the playback speed. Does this help? I will write this up in a post.
Thanks for that info Tim. Got me back to the right speed. Thought I was losing my mind when I couldn’t find the speed control in the old place.
Glad I could help.
But wait! I am having the same problem on my iPhone, but only on podcasts!! I don’t have any audiobooks, so I can’t test those, but I can’t find a way to change the speed of podcasts. Music seems fine. Any ideas??
Whew. Never mind. Just saw the post below. My ears thank you. Sorry for the too-soon post.
I somehow (don’t know how) set podcasts to play very fast. How do I revert to normal speed?
Thanks in advance!
@Jack Spellman
Do you know how to get the ’scrubber panel’ to pop up when you tap on the screen when in Music (while listening to a podcast)? on check out the blog post for an image. Assuming you have the iPhone OS 3.0, tap on the little button on the right that says 2X twice. Once will take it to 1/2 X and the second should return it to 1X.
Let me know if you get this to work.
Thank you, Tim, for your explanation on June 19th of how to change the speed on the iPhone iPod. It was driving me nuts for weeks!
@Tina, you are welcome.
PS. Don’t forget to sponsor this site by buying me a cup of coffee!
I got an iPod classic, not touch screen (thus no place to tap on the 2x button).
It somehow got stuck in the “speed” mode – during playback it shows “Speed Normal” at the bottom, and spinning the wheel or tapping on the button does not do anything to it, so that I can’t change volume or skip on the track.
Any idea how I can get it reverted back to the “normal” mode?
Many thanks Tim for the advice on June 30. My new 3GS iphone seemded to get stuck in fast forward in ipod mode, and this fixed it. Phew.
You are welcome!
Another one who fixed their problem from this page. Thanks.
Do you know how to increase the playback speed of audio file in iPhone. Like I want to play song of speed 2X or 1/2X. Please let me now as soon as possible.
I want to increase the speed of playback song to 2X and also to 0.5X with the use of UISlider. I know about the slider functionality. I just want to know how to increase play back speed. Please let me know as soon as possible.
Look at my post Accessing Audiobook Speed on iPhone 3.0. This has the image with the slider. on the bottom right of the slider area is a little icon with 1x, 2x or 1/2 x. touch that icon to select your speed.