Processing of auditory sequences

[Scott_Fahlman@SEF-PMAX.SLISP.CS.CMU.EDU]

    For the purpose of speech-compression, current technology using vector 
    quantization can compress speech to 2k bits/s without much fidelity loss. 
    Even lower rate (at 200-800 bits/s) also has acceptable intelligibility.
    They can be found in many commercial applications.
    
I think the original question was not asking about data-compression in the
usual sense, but about devices that take a normal speech signal and try to
play it back as fast as possible without loss of intelligibility -- sort of
speed-reading for the blind.  If you just speed up the tape, all the
frequencies go up and the speech is hard to understand.  So these machines
try to keep the frequencies the same while speeding up everything else.

-- Scott