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Have you ever heard a recording of your own voice and thought, “That's my voice? How come it sounds different? ”?
For many people, there is nothing more annoying than hearing a recording of our own voice. The recorded sound doesn't sound like what we thought it would. After listening, our voice becomes thinner, higher pitched, not like our "should" voice.
Recorders are not deceiving - Yes, that annoying squeaky voice is your real voice. There is a simple explanation that can explain why your voice sounds different to you and to others who hear it. This is one of the many surprising little tricks that the human body has, namely, because the sound has many different ways to reach the inner ear.
Before knowing the reasons behind why your voice sounds so strange on recordings, it's a good idea to first understand how humans produce sound.
How the sound works
Sound is the sensation or feeling that we hear. Humans produce sound by doing something. Imagine that you are moving a heavy piece of furniture, a table, for example. Movement of the table leg causes vibrations. Sound comes from the vibration of an object, which makes the air or other substances and particles around it vibrate (in this case, a table leg hitting the floor). The air vibrations that result from these two things move outward in all directions in the form of sound waves. As a result, the sound of table legs squeaking as they were moved.
The power for your voice comes from the air you exhale. When you inhale, your diaphragm drops and your ribs expand to draw air into your lungs. When you exhale, the process is reversed and air will exit the lungs, creating a flow of air in the trachea. This airflow provides energy for the vocal cords in your voice box (larynx) to produce sound. The stronger the airflow, the stronger the sound.
The larynx is above the throat. The larynx has two vocal cords that open during breathing and close during chewing of food and produce sound. When we produce sound, the airflow will pass through the two vocal cords that are huddled together. The vocal cords have a soft texture and will produce vibrations as air flows through them. These vibrations produce sound. The tighter the vocal cords crush, the tighter the vibrations will be, resulting in a higher pitch. This process causes the human voice to have a variety of pitches.
When working alone, the vocal cords produce a sound that sounds like a simple hum, like the hum of a bee. What makes the vocal difference to the voice is the work of the structures above the vocal cords, such as the throat, nose and mouth as part of the resonator. The buzzing sound produced by the vocal cords is transformed by the shape of the resonator ducts to produce a unique human voice.
So, what makes our voice recordings sound so different… and terrible? This is because when you speak, you hear your own voice in two different ways.
The reason why voices sound different on a voice recording
Sound can reach the inner ear by two separate pathways, and these pathways in turn influence what we perceive. Sounds produced through the air are transmitted from the surrounding environment via the external auditory canal, eardrum, and middle ear to the cochlea (the spiral structure in the inner ear) - aka, the way other people hear your voice.
The second way is through vibrations inside the skull, which are triggered by activity of your vocal cords. In contrast to the sound path above, the sound that bounces inside your skull directly reaches the cochlea through the head tissue - producing the sound you think. is your real voice.
When you speak, sound energy diffuses in the air around you and reaches the cochlea through the outer ear via air conduction. At the same time, the sound also travels through the body, from the vocal cords and other structures directly through the cochlea. However, the mechanical nature of your head enhances the low-frequency vibrations deeper, giving you the "fake" bass sound you've been familiar with. The voice you hear when you speak is a combination of the two sound production lines.
When you hear a recording of your own voice, the sound paths through the conduction of the skull (which is you think is your voice) is disabled so that you only hear the components of the sound produced by conduction of air in extraneous insulation. Therefore, when you hear your voice recording, the voice will sound clearly higher, just like your voice that has been heard by other people so far.
