One of the most requested features at LingQ, particularly when getting started in a language, is the ability to play the lesson audio at half speed. We are happy to finally add that function to the player! We also spruced up the rewind button to make it more obvious what it does and made some other cosmetic fixes. If you can’t see the new player right away, ctrl + refresh your browser (cmd + refresh on a Mac).
Merry Christmas!
I discovered that yesterday. This should be a really useful feature for examining phrases that seem to run together.
Great idea ! Thanks
Awesome!
Excellent, thank you! And it’s in the same key (joke for other guitarists)!
Very cool!
Very many thanks for all the trouble, Mark!
I was very excited when I read about this, (improving my Dutch listening skills is one of the reasons that i have come to LingQ) but I am wondering whether cutting the speed to half has been too much.
When I tried the slower speed on a number of advanced texts, the result has been a bit of a disappointment (I hate to be ungrateful). In Dutch, slowing to 50% really distorts the sound and makes the listening experience differently difficult. Personally I don’t find it makes fast texts easier.
When I listened to earlier lessons for beginners or near beginners which already have a slower speed, the slow speed was really distorted and extremely hard on the ear.
I still would like the opportunity to slow things down, but not by as much of this. I wonder how slowing by half was decided on? Does it work for some languages?
Is there any possibility of perhaps providing a half way house - slowing, but by less (say by 20 or 30 %) - so preventing the sound distortion…
The idea is great though…
Thanks for all the positive feedback!
I do agree that depending on the audio, there can be more or less distortion when slowing it down. I don’t think adjusting the rate at which the audio is slowed down will necessarily solve all of these issues. There is no perfect rate that will work well with all content across all languages. Therefore, we have decided to go with a 50% slowdown rate as this is the rate Apple uses on their podcast player. The fact is that this feature is there to help with certain sounds but the sooner you get to full speed, the better and that is really the only way to guarantee undistorted sound.
I guess you’re right that messing about with the speeds probably diverts from the job of getting to full speed and I’m incredibly grateful to LingQ in pushing me into taking listening seriously. The 90 Day challenge has provided goals that I have found tough but realisable and I can now listen to talking books read at normal speeds and get something from them. This was definitely NOT the case 3 months ago. Unfortunately the Dutch news is still mostly beyond me. Just gotta keep trying.
You’ll get there I’m sure! Are you importing Dutch news articles into LingQ to make sure you are getting to used to that content style?
I’m importing sailing blogs - as sailing is my passion! Maybe I need to import news pieces as well. The problem is that the news is so depressing! Reading it in English is quite enough gloom for any one day!!! Yet listening to the news is the best way of being exposed to Dutch at the speed that it is spoken at… Guess I just have to up my daily dose of depression - because you’re right about content style and vocabulary… Grrrr…!
are there any plans for some kind of AB repeat feature (ability to loop a selected selection of the audio by pressing “A” button to start the section you want to loop while the audio is playing…and then pressing the “B” button to signify the end of the section you want to be looped. I think it is a popular and important feature in most apps that are geared to listening to foreign language audio. It allows you to really focus your listening to parts of the audio that you don’t understand as well.
That would be a great feature but no plans at the moment. I will add it to our wishlist.
On the one year anniversary of me asking about any plans for an AB repeat type of feature. Any plans yet for this? Anybody else think this is a really good idea? For me I use it on other audio player apps and it really makes it easier to focus on smaller chunks of audio before attempting to listen to the larger full lesson. I think it would really be effective for the iOS (and android for other people) app.
This is still in our wishlist. Others do request it as well but we still haven’t found the time to fit it in to our development plan. Hopefully we will get to it this year.
On the (almost) third year anniversary of me asking about AB repeat, I logged in for the first time in a long time and saw a loop button at the top of the audio player. Excitedly, I attempt to use it, but it seems non-functional. Am I missing something? Does this work yet? Thanks in advance.
The loop button plays the audio continuously, or, on the playlist plays the playlist continuously. No progress on AB repeat I’m afraid.
@rjtrudel - Not as great, but you can customise your listening parts the old fashioned way: download, import a copy into Audacity, edit (takes me seconds to delete unwanted audio when using the magnifier, dragging and using keyboard delete button either side [because I’m too lazy to edit properly]), export as MP3, then import into LingQ with relevant text - and play the loop button. I find we can import audio as short as 10 seconds now, instead of the old 20 secs, so you can customise it for anything. I use Audacity a lot to edit out English, long pauses and any unwanted sound effects within minutes. Therefore you could easily set up your own Course comprising short audio clips you want to practice as ‘lessons’.