which is more effective audio content that is spoken at natural speed or one that is deliberately slowed down to make understanding easier ,i think they are people who fall into both sides of the debate for example i was on youtube looking for ci content for french and i saw this Easy News - Slow French - Learn French - Ryanair Passenger Takes Emergency Exit - YouTube
maybe my french is a little higher level but i find this way to exagerated and painful to listen to
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I prefer a natural speed. It’s nice to be able to slow things down if you can’t quite catch it, but listening at a natural speed allows me to get used to the rhythm of the language as well.
I’ve been putting it down to 0.75 and that seems to work really well for identifying what they are saying, but recently I have gone for natural speed and can understand them fine (following along with the text).
Ah, I just had a look at that linked vid, and yeah, nuts to that! Far too slow. Painful, for sure. She’s speaking so slowly, I forget the last word once she finishes saying the current one! 
The LingQ lessons I find I can listen to at natural speed, easily. Some of the other lessons, I do need to drop the speed down to 0.75 (75%).
I personally think that using slowed down audio will negatively impact listening understanding in the long run. It might be easier at the beginning, but then you’ll need to “catch up” to natural speech anyway.
So I always start with natural speech no matter what, and instead of slowing it down I repetitively listen to it, until certain words start to become more and more understandable.
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What I don’t like about slowing it down it’s the distortion. The voice is not natural anymore and it changes the tonality. So, I prefer to find someone, even in Youtube, that speaks slower at the beginning and then move to other levels later. Also, at the beginning, I try to go with people that articulate very well their language. Sometimes it’s not a question of speed but clarity.
Afterwards, I can speed the language up too and the distortion is not a problem anymore because I’m focused in a different way.
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