• Question: Can you hear yourself the same as everybody else hears you? If not, can you hear yourself the same as everybody else on a recording?

    Asked by hannahhhhh to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 25 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      When you speak, you hear yourself very differently to how others hear you. This is because the soundwaves are travelling through your head to your ears where they are detected.

      When you hear yourself on a recording you’re hearing yourself as everybody else hears you. This is why a lot of people hate hearing recordings of their own voice, it’s you but an unfamiliar you!

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      A healthy young human can hear sounds in the range 20-20,000 Hz. This will vary slightly from person to person, some will have slightly better hearing than others. However, when considering hearing your own voice your ears pick up the sound from the air but also the sound that vibrates through your skull etc. This means you hear yourself differently to someone that hears just the virbrations in the air.

      When listening to a recordning of yourself it really depends on how good the quality of the recording is and how good the speakers you play it back through are. You’ll probably still think you sound a bit weird though.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Not quite – our hearing is all slightly different, and when you hear yourself, you are hearing your voice though your jaw-bone – so it will always sound a bit different.

      Try recording your voice and listening back to it – it always sounds a bit different to how you think you sound.

Comments

  • Photo: Susana

    Susana commented on :

    If you record your voice and listen to it, you will hear your voice very closely to what everyone else does. Which is typically very different from how we hear our own voice directly when we speak, the vibrations from our vocal cords reach our ear and change how we interpret the sound in our brain.

    We all have different hearing abilities though, so even when a bunch of people listen to the same recorded voice, it will probably not be the exact same sounds for all.