A large share of audiobook listening happens above normal speed, often well above it. The habit reflects a mismatch between how fast a book is narrated and how fast a listener can follow.
Narration is slower than reading by design
Professional narration is paced for clarity, with deliberate articulation and pauses that let a listener follow without rereading.
Silent reading moves considerably faster for most people, because the eye can skip, backtrack and process phrases as units.
A listener accustomed to reading therefore experiences default narration as unhurried, and increasing the speed closes a gap rather than creating urgency.
Narrators are aware of this and cannot compensate, because a recording paced for fast listeners would be unfollowable for everyone else.
Comprehension adjusts quickly
Listeners who raise the speed report that the new pace sounds normal within a short period, and that returning to standard speed then sounds slow.
The adjustment is a matter of familiarity with compressed speech rather than of effort, which is why the change tends to be permanent once made.
Where the material is dense or unfamiliar, listeners slow down again, so the control is used as a variable tool rather than a fixed preference.
Listening usually accompanies something else
Audiobooks are consumed while commuting, exercising, walking or doing household tasks, and those activities have their own durations.
Speed becomes a way of fitting a book into available time, and finishing more books is a visible reward that reinforces the habit.
Subscription services strengthen this further, since a listener with access to a wide catalogue has a reason to move through titles rather than linger.
The technology removed the old constraint
Physical audio formats offered no practical way to alter playback without distorting pitch, so listeners took the pace they were given.
Digital playback separates speed from pitch, which made faster listening comfortable rather than comical and turned it into a standard feature.
Once every application offered the control in the same place, using it stopped being a technical choice and became an ordinary part of listening.
What speed costs the performance
Narration is a performance with timing built into it, and compression flattens pauses, rhythm and the spaces a narrator left deliberately.
Listeners generally accept that trade for information-led non-fiction and resist it for fiction and memoir, where the delivery is part of what they came for.