2022.03.01 – 0425 – Pod-Fasting
POD-FASTING
This is when listeners play back your podcast really fast, perhaps 1.5 or even twice the originally recorded speed (often referred to as “2-ex” speed). They may be short of time, or they may find your delivery either not compelling enough – just too drawn out, or not enough wheat for the chaff, or simply your presentation just. Too. Slow.
The podcast player removes the micro-pauses in and between words, without affecting your pitch. So you seem to speed up without sounding like Mickey Mouse, Alvin The Chipmunk or Pinky and Perky.
If you want to replicate that in your home recordings for say voice-overs, such tech is available in most DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations). You usually do this by selecting the audio you want to speed up, and then a button called “Remove Silence” or “Truncate Silence” and then setting parameters for what you want to be considered as ‘silence’: that is, the ‘loudness’ and the duration’.
You don’t want to eliminate all silence as that will sound completely unnatural, but you may want to reduce them by a percentage.
“There's a time and a place for everything.
Listen to the movie ‘Tootsie, where Bill Murray stole many scenes from Dustin Hoffman's manic performance with measured, mindful pacing.
The ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, at 1.5x speed, sounds like a grocery list.
Liam Neeson's ‘Taken’ speech, the action movie monologue that became the meme of the 2000s,
at 1.5x speed, would be 0.5x as threatening.” [1]
[1] https://www.thepodcasthost.com/editing-production/podcasts-at-1-5x-speed-take-control-of-your-flow/
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