Sure would be nice to have the ability to play podcasts at faster than 1x speed. We never had it in iTunes in Mojave and earlier, but now that Podcasts is its own app I was sure hoping this would make it to the macOS version within Catalina.
I was very reluctant to upgrade to Catalina with the loss of smart playlists and after I did I discovered the horrible sound you describe when listening to 1.5X or 2X, like a tin can. The audio on my computer is also cutting out as I test it listening at 2X.
This really has to be fixed! It seems they just threw in the faster playback speeds and didn't implement any kind of sound technology to improve the sound at faster speeds like all the podcast apps on the market. Very lazy. Good thing this doesn't occur on the phone with the podcast app.
Ouch... I'm blind... it's there in the menu up top... Controls > Playback speed.
This needs a button in the player window like the 30 sec skip button.
But can we talk about how BAD it sounds when you play at 1.5x compared to other podcast apps? It sounds like it's being played in a tin can.
At 1.5 speed, the sound is terrible indeed - initially thought it was show-specific, but nope -happens every time. A bug not fixed even in 10.15.1. It's unusable.
Play speed in Catalina Podcasts app
