A commonly suggested starting point is to play characters at around 15 to 20 words per minute while stretching the gaps so the overall pace lands nearer 5 to 10. A Morse code translator with Farnsworth spacing can do exactly that. Speed is measured against the word PARIS, and learners who hear fast letters with long pauses tend to recognize them as sounds instead of counting dots.
The arithmetic is simple and worth knowing. The word PARIS, including the space after it, takes exactly 50 units of time, where a dot is one unit. So at any speed in words per minute, a dot lasts 1,200 divided by that number, in milliseconds. At 20 words per minute, a dot is 60 milliseconds and a dash 180. At 15, it's 80 and 240. At 5 words per minute, the pace of the old licensing test in the United States, a dot lasts 240 milliseconds and a dash nearly three-quarters of a second. Any Morse code translator with a speed slider is doing this same sum behind the scenes.
That last figure explains why setting a Morse code translator to play everything slowly backfires. When each dash drags on for most of a second, your brain has time to count, and counting becomes the strategy. It works for a few letters and collapses as speed rises. The technique named after radio amateur Donald R. Farnsworth exists to avoid exactly this trap: keep each letter at full speed so its sound shape stays intact, then lengthen the silences between letters and words so you can think.
Test settings against your own ears rather than a fixed rule. Many learners start with character speed at 20 and overall speed at 10 or lower, then raise the overall speed in small steps once they're copying most letters correctly. The Morse code translator I'd pick for experimenting offers a words-per-minute control and a separate Farnsworth control, with sample values of 20 and 15, so you can nudge one while leaving the other alone.
Pitch matters more than people expect when you set up a Morse code translator. Tones around 550 hertz are common, but the best pitch is the one that stays comfortable after fifteen minutes. A shrill tone tires the ear quickly, and a muddy low one hides the edges of each dot. Keep volume moderate too, particularly with headphones. If you have difficulty hearing certain tones, a hearing professional can advise, and the light mode offers a workable alternative for practice.
A simple routine ties the settings together. Pick ten short words, play each one three times at your starting speed with the text hidden, write what you heard, then check. If eight or nine come out right, nudge the overall speed up a notch; if only five or six do, step back. Keep a note of the setting that felt comfortable, since it becomes your baseline for the next session. Small, steady adjustments beat jumping straight to a number that merely sounds impressive.
Real-world speeds give useful context. Casual amateur radio conversations often happen at speeds that would feel fast to a beginner, and contest operators go faster still, yet 
of them started there. Reaching conversational pace takes months for many people, and some never aim for it, because slow Morse is perfectly good for puzzles, signaling or pure enjoyment. Setting a Morse code translator well above your comfort zone for a minute makes a fair preview of that pace, and it shows how much headroom experienced operators have.
Treat these numbers, and any Morse code translator presets, as starting points. Hearing, practice habits, and goals differ, so results vary from learner to learner. If you're preparing for a formal exam or license, follow the speed targets in your course materials and ask an instructor or a local amateur radio club how to pace your training.
