Almost everyone who uses the readaloud features in Storyteller speeds up the audio playback quite a bit, often 2-3x, so that it matches their reading speed better. The Storyteller apps let you set different playback speeds for pure audio playback vs readaloud, since being able to see the text usually makes it easier to listen faster!

I supposed I should add: it's also, obviously, fine if this just isn't for you! Lots of people get a lot of value out of audiobooks (e.g., I really like to listen to audiobooks in the car or while running), but like to switch to reading when it's an option. And lots of people find readaloud super valuable, whether because they have a print disability or neurodivergence that makes reading challenging, or just because they like the experience of being read to. But lots of people are in neither of those groups!

I'd never considered such a tool before today, but the example sparked the exact same idea for me, as if it were the most obvious next step to invert the causal direction and externalize the inner reading voice (instead of trying to force the internal reading to follow the external audio). I'm not sure that it would improve reading comprehension or make the experience better in some ineffable way, but it would be really interesting to try it out. Questions arise:

- Would it help with reading comprehension? Speed? Enjoyment?

- If the audio was your own synthesized voice, would that help comprehension and immersion?

- If the audio was in a voice very different from your own, and you used this system for several hours a day, would it change your natural inner reading voice, or even some other aspect of your self-perception? I don't believe I've experienced Such a tight coupling between thoughts driving external responses before; I didn't expect to do so until real-time brain scanning got a lot better than current SotA.

- While reading, I frequently speed along and then jump back a word, sentence, or paragraph to slowly review it. In this system, the audio would slow down as I read back through more slowly, almost sounding out words along with me. I just read a book filled with the names of obscure french villages, and I couldn't just ignore them - instead bogged down in sounding them out and trying to guess how to pronounce them. Having a system sounding them out with/for me would have been awesome. This assumes the system is good at pronouncing things in various languages (mostly solved problem), and picking sane defaults when pronunciation conflicts arise (mostly unsolved?). In those cases, how hard would inferring be? Google translate is pretty good at generating localized pronunciations, but TTS systems struggle.

- Specifically for non-technical reading, it would be interesting to try having a very low level of ambient noise backgrounding the speech, driven by an LLM analyzing the text for obvious cues. Tavern sounds, rushing of wind in the mountains, crackling campfire, or even music generation (creepy dungeon etc etc)... When you pause reading for a moment to look away from the book, the speech obviously stops - but the tavern sounds continue. Might help people 'lock in' who normally get distracted from whatever they're reading.

I read very fast and I noticed that after a certain point, it helps to not have the inner voice. Instead its more like I see a bunch of text and I understand it instead of going word by word. I don't think its possible to do this with audio.