Why do people hate the sound of their own voice?
Have you ever wondered why does your voice sound completely different when you hear it on a recording? You might find your voice to be thinner or, on the contrary, deeper than in reality. Moreover, a recent study showed that only 38% of people recognise their own voice. According to Time.com, the explanation for this is very simple.
Specialists from University College London claim that we perceive our voice through our own body, which means lower frequencies and thus deeper sounds. In other words, we hear our voice in a distorted way.
On the other hand, the others perceive our voice as it propagates through the air, which means they hear it on a higher pitch. The same happens when we record our voice. Therefore, the recorded voice has many high frequencies and fewer low frequencies.
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“The sound is going around our sinuses, all the empty spaces in our heads and the middle part of our ears, which changes the way we hear sounds compared to what other people hear. When we speak, not only the air around our vocal cords vibrates, but other tissues, bones and various cartilages as well. Therefore, our ears receive sound waves that go through all these mediums. On the other hand, when we hear our recorded voice, this seems different than what we are used to because it lacks the special features generated by the propagation of sound waves through our bodies,” says Professor Martin Birchall.
Many people don’t recognise their own voice
People don’t normally listen to their recorded voices. It is therefore of no surprise that when we hear our voice in a recording, we don’t even realise that we are speaking. A recent study showed that only 38% of the people whose voice had been recorded immediately identified their own voice.
“When we hear our own voice in a recording, it can often feel surprising and disappointing. We get used to the sound we hear in our heads, even though it’s a distorted sound. We build our self-image and vocal self image around what we hear, rather than the reality,” Birchall says.
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