Windows Media Player Clone?

[Need-help]

Windows Media Player's latest version has a feature which I really like. You can vary the playback speed of archived streaming audios and mp3s via a slide bar. I use it to speed up talk shows to about 1.8 times the normal speed. Perhaps I have ADD - my mind tends to wander when I listen to archives at normal speed.

I'm new to Linux and am using Ubunto Edgy. Are there any media players that will allow me to use such a feature while listening to these playbacks. (I have mplayer and RealPlayer installed but haven't found a 'vari-speed' function on either of them yet.

Thanks.

[jpalfree]

a video player called 'xine' (the graphical frontend not the library) has a speed up/slow down function. You just press the up/down arrows. The package to install might be called something like xine-ui instead of just xine since xine libraries are also used by other media players.

[Need-help]

I did see the up and and down speed adjustments you mentioned after I installed the xine ui. However when I try to play a simple downloaded mp3 I get a message:
"The stream 'filename.mp3' uses an unsupported CODEC: Audio Codec: MPEG 1 Layer 3 CBR (0x0) Start playback anyway?"

When I say yes, it starts with no audio. Seems strange that a media player can't play an mp3.

I found a thread relating to this by a person who couldn't get mp3s playing in one of his players. The thread read

>> BMPx uses xine-lib as backed, so you need xine-lib merged with USE=mad

> Okay! Solved...I rebuild xine-lib with "mad" support and it is working. I didn't realize what "mad" was. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

Anyway, I didn't see an option to install xine-lib and don't know what the above entry means anyway.

[tvilkov]

the above message (merge with USE=mad) is for Gentoo. You should try installing the MAD library from repositories (should be something along the lines of libmad ). Also, on Linux mp3's are a bit dodgy because it is patented format. Use ogg instead.