Jun 18, 2008 11:01 pm US/Central
Good Question: Why Does My Voice Sound Different?
(WCCO)
We all think we know what our voices sound like, until we actually hear ourselves on a tape recording.
"I'm 22, but I sound like a 16-year-old," said Katie Wagner, of Lakeville. She wondered, "Why do we sound so different?"
"I don't want to say this on TV, but I think I sound a little nasally," said one woman on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis.
"On my voice mail, on the telephone, my voice sounds a little bit lighter, not as deep," said another man.
"It just didn't sound like what I expected in my head when I hear myself talk all the time," said another businessman.
"The answer to that is bone conduction," according to Dr. Melisa Oblander, Clinic Manager at the Fairview Audiology and Aural Rehabilitation Clinic.
Oblander points out that we hear ourselves in two ways at the same time.
"We hear our own voice through the air but we also hear a fair amount of our own voice through our bones and its called bone conduction," she explained.
Sound travels through the air fairly efficiently, and other people hear the full range of our voices, the highs and the lows. But it's not as efficient rattling around through the bones of our skull.
"We sound a little hollow to ourselves, a little lower pitched than we do to other people," said Oblander.
The higher frequencies don't travel through the bone very well, and that's one reason why people think they sound younger on recordings.
"Why do almost all of us hate the way we sound?" wondered Wagner.
Oblander said there isn't much we can do to eliminate the internal sounds created by bone conduction.
"Put your head in a barrel," she suggested jokingly.
When you plug your ears, you can hear more clearly the sound that's vibrating inside your skull. Other people, and recordings, do not pick up those vibrations.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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