I really don't see how this could be useful to anyone, sorry Helge.

It is very usefull for audio books or radio interviews. About music: making a song faster is usefull when you want to play a slower song alongside faster ones at a party.

please comment why you think this may not be usefull

Because only a very small percentage of our users would actually use it. Still, it would require a considerable amount of code, which has to be maintained. Our general rule is not to add such "fringe" features.

Adding to that, there has to be backend support for this. AFAIK only xine supports this out of the box. And even with xine it's unclear whether it works well.

A speed control function is essential to use the player in the area of sport training like dancing and aerobic. For me and my friends this function is a ko-criteria.

The pitching function is useful but not essential.

Plugin for pitch control would be just perfect for Dj's choosing some vinyls from online stores like http://www.juno.co.uk/...
It would be nice feature for all who listens techno (hard techno) and like it fast ;) Two of my friends ain't using amarok (despite they like it) claim that xmms has a plugin for pitch contol and amarok hasn't...

Calling pitch control "fringe" feature is a miscarriage, and is based on own needs, because there are people who would be really grateful for such a plug-in...

I'm musician and the only thing I really miss in Amarok is this kind of playback control.
I can easily do it with NoAtun (it's a plugin), but it would be much more confortable to use just one application for the task.
Wouldn't it be possible to use this plugin code?

Thanks for Amarok. It's great!

This feature would be really, extremely valuable for those who are using Amarok to learn a foreign language. As several ESL/language podcasts proliferate across the net, an increasing number of people learn foreign language on their computer. 

The rationale is, that by adjusting playback speed, the listener can mentally decode the dialogue at a comprehensible rate. 

It would be a delightful feature in Amarok.

I agree with the previous comments. Speed control with pitching would be really useful. For example, modern music is often a little bit too slow or fast for a particular dance. The ability to adjust the speed would be really helpful.

Altering song speed is basically editing. Amarok's a player, not an editor.
There's plenty of sound editors around - Traverso, LMMS, soniK, Mixxx.
Now, someone might argue that Kaffeine is a player too, yet it can change brightness, gamma, hell even speed. But I guess these are far more used than an Amarok speed/pitch feature would be.

That said, in an ideal world Amarok would probably have realtime effect plugins for things like this.

The possibility to adjust the speed is very important for dance music
(maybe even more important than adjusting the volume which could be done
via an external mixer or amplifier). I don't agree that speed adjusting
is editing, it is basic playback functionality.

Using a sound editor is not an option, because one does not wan't to
handle one particular song (and recode that song to a specific speed).
Often one wants to adjust the speed dynamically. Moreover, one needs a
tool that also manages your music collection and has some kind of
playlist which is missing in a sound editor.

Ok. So what we want is DSP plugins, is it? Like in WinAmp.
Mark, does that sound realistic?

For me this is also my number one missing feature. I'm using amarok for dance training, and it's very useful to be able to vary the speed of the music once in a while.

BTW, alsaplayer also has a speed control slider (even slowing sown to a negative percentage which means playing backwards).

It's sad that this is marked WONTFIX, despite 160 votes and continued interest... I, too, still have to keep noatun and its filters installed to have this functionality (mostly for use with audio books).  

I do not agree that play speed tuning is editing. It can be very usefull, for instance to listen to audio conference faster than real-time. I always use  this feature on my mobile audio player. This a very usefull feature for scientists.

This feature exists for video in mythtv.  I use it all the time in mythtv to watch news 30 minute news programs in 20 minutes.  My personal use of this would be for podcasts.  If you offered multipliers, like 1.3x you could listen to 60 minute podcasts in ~40 minutes.

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Anyone know any player that is not as gay as Amarok and actually supports some useful features like this one?

@unimatrix: Please do not use "gay" as an insult.

And I am sure searching on Google will give you hundreds off players that support this feature.

I've just signed up here for the sole purpose of voting for this issue.  I'm rather shocked that when KDE seems to focus so well on creating a good experience for the user that developers would be so quick to say, "We're not going to do it, no matter what users want or need."

At least three valid reasons for changing playback speed have been given.  While three may not be many, these are all reasons a number of people will use.  I am a ballroom dance student and the studio I go to wants a computerized playback system so they don't have to keep track of hundreds of CDs.  A few months ago they made a choice of Vista over Linux because I wasn't able to provide a good playback system for them.  They're considering spending a lot of money for a program that basically does what Amarok does with one more feature: they can vary the playback speed.  This is a public setting where many people would see KDE and Amarok in use every single day, but I lost out on switching them over to Linux over this ONE feature.

Dance studios and gyms with aerobic programs are high profile settings for computers to be running Linux.  As I read this bug, it looks like developers are saying, "We don't see a use for this for US, so we're not going to do it."  That's shortsighted and I'm quite disappointed to see a KDE project exhibit such thinking.  Many people would use this feature for podcasts and if it enabled Amarok to be used (and seen) in public places like gyms and dance studios, it would certainly increase awareness of both KDE and Amarok.

I too am not using Amarok because it cannot change speed. It's an essential feature for me...

This is a very useful feature, especially good for use with audio recordings of lectures.

I too wish Amarok had support for this.