Pitched (see what I did there?) at anyone wanting to mess around with the speed or pitch of audio files, Harald Meyer's latest little utility is of most use to musicians trying to match a live piece with something previously recorded. Screenshots and links below for the somewhat cumbersomely-named Music/Audio Speed Changer.

The idea, as the title suggests, is to be able to play all (or part) of an audio file back with tweaked pitch and speed - the uses for this probably depend on some lateral thinking on your part, but Music/Audio Speed Changer does work:

Any MP3 file can be opened, but the utility didn't like my iTunes-created AAC format music collection. Here I'm opening up a podcast.

Ah. Opening a one hour podcast took about three minutes, so not very practical for speeding up audio books and the like. Best kept for MP3-format music playback and manipulation.

The main interface. The left/right grey cursors control the start and end points desired, while the red one is (obviously) the current playback position. Tapping on the 'Tempo' and 'Pitch' buttons is where the magic happens...

In the case of 'Tempo' (i.e. speed), you can vary the parameter over a very wide range and in increments of 1%.

Or, in the case of pitch, you can go up or down two full octaves, in semi-tone increments.

The quoted use case of a musician trying to practice alongside something prerecorded is about the only use case I can imagine for this utility, clever though it is. What about you? Comments welcome - how would you get more from this?

You can buy Music/Audio Speed Changer for £1.50 here in the Nokia Store.