SONIC(1)

💖 sonic — the speech speed manipulator, bestie edition 💖

okay so. this is sonic(1), straight out of the General Commands Manual, and it's genuinely one of my fave little tools. it does one thing and it ATE: it makes wav files of speech go faster or slower. periodt. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

sonic — Speech speed manipulator 🗣️⚡

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

sonic [OPTION]... inFile outFile

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Sonic is used to make wav files of speech faster or slower. The primary advance in sonic is the ability to speed speech up by much more than 2X, with minimal distortion. like, that's the whole glow-up right there. iconic behaviour fr fr. 💅

but wait, there's more (there's always more). Sonic can be used for both speeding up and slowing down speech files. and on top of that, it can change the pitch and the volume too. main character energy honestly. 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -c — Modify pitch by emulating vocal chords vibrating faster or slower. ngl this causes more distortion than the default pitch scaling, but it sounds more like the same person trying to talk higher or lower. (the default pitch change instead makes the voice sound like a bigger or smaller person, but introduces very little distortion. so like, pick your vibe 🫶)
• -p pitch — Set pitch scaling factor. so 1.3 means 30%% higher. 📈
• -q — Disable all speed-up heuristics, possibly improving the quality slightly. this is mainly used for debugging the speed-up heuristics, so it's giving "for the devs, not for the timeline" energy. 🔧
• -r rate — Adjust the speed of playback. heads up bestie: this scales both the pitch and speed equally. so it's not the sneaky one, it's the honest one. ⚖️
• -s speed — Set speed up factor. 1.0 means no change, 2.0 means 2X faster. 🏃♀️💨
• -v scaleFactor — Scale volume by scaleFactor. 1.5 increases by 50%. Clips if the maximum range is exceeded. so like, don't be greedy with the volume or it'll sound crunchy 😭

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

sonic -s 3.2 book.wav book_fast.wav

The above command would increase the speed of an audio book called book.wav by a factor of 3.2, and write the result in book_fast.wav. 3.2X!!! in one command!!! obsessed. 🍓

sonic -s 0.5 -v 1.5 spanish.wav spanish_slow.wav

This would slow down the file spanish.wav by a factor of 2, make the volume 50% louder, and write the result to spanish_slow.wav. slower AND louder, the duality of woman ✨

sonic -p 2.0 low.wav high.wav

This would make a low voice sound very high pitched. tiny little chipmunk moment, no cap 🐿️💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Bill Cox — waywardgeek@gmail.com

Sonic Version 0.2, Copyright 2010, Bill Cox, Apache 2.0 license. 📜

and that's the whole page bestie 🫶 — sonic(1), from the General Commands Manual, Sonic Version 0.2, Copyright 2010, Bill Cox, Apache 2.0 license — go forth and speed up your audiobooks, iykyk 💖✨🎀