No. 28Psychology3 minviews 24
Published by GK Library Annex
My recorded voice sounds strange to me
It's the voice you hear every day, so why does a recording make it sound like someone else?
Playing back a recording, you may be startled at how thin and high your voice sounds. While you talk, you hear not only the sound that travels through the air but also a low hum that reaches you through your skull. A recording leaves that hum out.
Two paths while you speak
Sound leaving your mouth travels through the air and into your outer ear. This is called air conduction. At the same time, vibrations from your vocal cords shake your skull and jaw and pass straight to the cochlea in your inner ear. That path is called bone conduction.
In 1949, hearing researcher Georg von Békésy reported experiments showing that speakers hear these two paths at roughly equal strength. Bone carries low pitches well, while the sound that loops back through the air from your mouth to your own ear loses more of its high pitches. That's why your own voice sounds deep and full to you.
A recording holds only the air
A microphone, like a listener's ear, picks up only the sound in the air. The hum in your skull never makes it into the file, so playback gives you your voice without the low tones you're used to.
A common misconception is that the recorder changes your voice. A small speaker can color the sound a little, but even with good equipment the strangeness stays. The recording is closer to the voice other people have been hearing all along.
Kinder when you don't know
It clashes with the voice you know, so it feels unfamiliar, and your habits of speech and little tremors all reach you at once, which can make it more embarrassing. Usually you're too busy talking to listen to your own voice this calmly.
In a 2013 study, American researchers played participants recordings of many people's voices and asked them to rate how attractive each one was. Participants gave their own voices, quietly mixed into the set, higher scores than others did. When you don't know it's you, you actually listen more kindly. Feeling strange about it doesn't mean your voice is bad.
Try talking with your ears covered
Cover your ears lightly with both hands and speak, and the sound you hear through bone gets louder, so you can feel how low your voice usually sounds to you. Take your hands away and speak again, and you can hear it turn noticeably lighter.
When practicing a presentation or a call, it helps to listen to recordings of yourself a few times. As your ear gets used to the voice others hear, the early strangeness fades, and things worth fixing, like speaking speed or pronunciation, become easier to hear.
Related reads
A recorded voice is close to the one other people hear. Only the low hum you hear through your skull while speaking is missing.
Notes and references · von Békésy 1949, JASA; Hughes and Harrison 2013, Perception. An experiment showing that speakers hear their voice through air and bone at similar strength, and a study finding that people rate their own voice more kindly when they don't know it's theirs. How big the difference is varies with each person's head.
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