Buzz
Reader Christah wrote to ask, “Why do our voices sound different to us than they do to others or on recordings?” And Jenny inquired on Facebook, "Why do we dislike the sound of our own voice?"
For many, listening to a recording of their own voice is an uncomfortable experience. It never sounds quite as expected—it tends to be higher-pitched, sharper, and just off. However, the recording (whether on tape or an mp3) doesn’t deceive, and the sound we think we make isn't the one others hear. This phenomenon occurs due to the way sound travels to our inner ear.
All sounds we perceive—whether it's birds singing, bees buzzing, or voices talking—are waves of pressure moving through the air. Our outer ears “capture” these waves and channel them through the ear canal into our head. They hit the eardrum, which begins to vibrate, and these vibrations are passed along to the inner ear, where they are converted into signals that travel through the auditory nerve to the brain for interpretation.
Good Vibrations
The inner ear doesn’t only respond to external sound waves traveling down the ear canal. It also detects vibrations occurring within the body, and it’s the combination of both that creates the sound you perceive when you speak.
When you talk, vibrations from your vocal cords resonate through your throat and mouth, with some of them being transferred by the bones in your neck and head. The inner ear detects these vibrations, just like any other sound, converting them into electrical signals and sending them to the brain. Every time you speak, your inner ear is stimulated both by internal bone vibrations and by the sound traveling through the air into your ears.
This mix of vibrations reaching the inner ear through two distinct paths gives your voice (as you normally hear it) a distinct quality that you don’t experience with sounds that travel through the air alone. Specifically, your bones amplify the deeper, lower-frequency vibrations, lending your voice a richer, bass-heavy tone that’s missing when you hear it on a recording.
This story originally appeared in 2012.
