StretchPlayer: Time Stretching & Pitch Shifting Audio Player for Ubuntu Linux

Let’s say that you wanted to create the lyrics of a song, but if its tempo is a bit high (faster playback), then unless you’re like the world’s fastest typist, it ain’t gonna be an easy task ;-).

So the best solution is to slow down the playback speed (tempo) but without destroying the “pitch”. Otherwise as you’d see in movies, the audio output gets distorted thus, you’ll have a hard time figuring out the vocals).

So in that sense, if you’re looking for an audio player that lets you stretch the time (change tempo, without distorting the playback) and also the ability to change the pitch whenever you want, then “StretchPlayer” is a pretty cool tool.

However, it has a single drawback, and depending on your needs it could be a major one too, and that is, it doesn’t support the MP3 format!.

In that case, you can use another tool called “Play it Slowly” which supports a wide variety of formats (as it uses Gstreamer), but then again, when comparing the two, I think “StretchPlayer” lets you easily control the playback where “Play it Slowly”, although it’s quite powerful, can be a bit confusing due to its UI design (perhaps).

Few main features of “StretchPlayer” …

*. Supports WAV, Raw audio formats such as Microsoft PCM, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, CAF, AIFC, FLAC, SND etc.

*. Lets you easily adjust both Pitch and the Speed.

*. Start/Pause and Stop playback buttons (including keyboard support).

*. Progress bar for controlling the playback position.

*. Enable/Disable playback repeat.

*. Change the volume levels.

*. Shows information such as the: Current speed, pitch level, volume level, playback position and the CPU usage on its window.

That’s it.

If interested you can install “StretchPlayer” in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin and 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot by using the below commands in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install stretchplayer

Other version such as Ubuntu 11.04 are not supported, but if you use Ubuntu 9.10, then in this “StretchPlayer’s” home page, you’ll find a “.deb” built for the “Karmic” version.

Now, for the record; I’ve tested it by both lowering and increasing the playback speeds aggressively, and the audio output was very clear. So yes, it works really well :).

But as said, if you don’t like the fact that it doesn’t support MP3, then you can install “Play It Slowly” instead, by using the below command (has builds for 12.04, 11.10 and 11.04) to install it.

sudo apt-get install playitslowly

That’s it!.