Ok, for this one, let me write something useful (although my other posts are useful too =P~). Lately, I don't have something important to do, so for wasting my time, I sometimes read Reader's Digest, and found out something interesting in the Fifth Annual Humour Issue. Here it is :
So, the topic is Why do other people hear our voices differently than we do?
We have probably all had this experience. We listen to a tape recording of ourselves talking with some friends. We insist the tape doesn't sound at all like our voice, but everyone else's sounds reasonably accurate. According to speech therapist Dr Mike D'Asaro, there is a universal pattern of rejection of one's own voice. Is there a medical explanation?
Yes. Speech begins at the larynx, where the vibration emanates. Part of the vibration is conducted through the air - that is what your friends (and the tape recorder) hear when you speak. Another part of the vibration is directed through the fluids and solids of our heads. Our inner and middle ears are parts of caverns hollowed out by bone - the hardest bone of the skull. The inner ears contain fluid, the middle ears contain air, and the two press against each other. The larynx is also surrounded by soft tissue full of liquid. Sound transmits differently through the air and through solids and liquids, and this difference account for almost all of the tonal differences we hear on a recording of our own voice.
When we speak, we are not hearing our voice solely with our ears, but also through internal hearing, a mostly liquid transmission through a series of bodily organs. During an electric guitar solo, who hears the "real" sound? The audience, the guitarist, or the tape recorder located inside the guitar? the question is moot. There are three different sounds being made by the guitarist, and the principle is the same for the human voice. We can't say that either the tape recorder or the speakers hear the "right" voice, only that the voices are indeed different.
Dr D'Asaro points out that we have an internal memory of our voice in our brain, and the memory is richer than what we hear in a tape playback. Listening to a recording of our own voice is like listening to a symphony on a bad transistor radio. - the sound is recognisable but a pale imitation.
Credit for Reader's Digest
So, the topic is Why do other people hear our voices differently than we do?
We have probably all had this experience. We listen to a tape recording of ourselves talking with some friends. We insist the tape doesn't sound at all like our voice, but everyone else's sounds reasonably accurate. According to speech therapist Dr Mike D'Asaro, there is a universal pattern of rejection of one's own voice. Is there a medical explanation?
Yes. Speech begins at the larynx, where the vibration emanates. Part of the vibration is conducted through the air - that is what your friends (and the tape recorder) hear when you speak. Another part of the vibration is directed through the fluids and solids of our heads. Our inner and middle ears are parts of caverns hollowed out by bone - the hardest bone of the skull. The inner ears contain fluid, the middle ears contain air, and the two press against each other. The larynx is also surrounded by soft tissue full of liquid. Sound transmits differently through the air and through solids and liquids, and this difference account for almost all of the tonal differences we hear on a recording of our own voice.
When we speak, we are not hearing our voice solely with our ears, but also through internal hearing, a mostly liquid transmission through a series of bodily organs. During an electric guitar solo, who hears the "real" sound? The audience, the guitarist, or the tape recorder located inside the guitar? the question is moot. There are three different sounds being made by the guitarist, and the principle is the same for the human voice. We can't say that either the tape recorder or the speakers hear the "right" voice, only that the voices are indeed different.
Dr D'Asaro points out that we have an internal memory of our voice in our brain, and the memory is richer than what we hear in a tape playback. Listening to a recording of our own voice is like listening to a symphony on a bad transistor radio. - the sound is recognisable but a pale imitation.
Credit for Reader's Digest
WOGH!
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