Have you ever listened to a recording of yourself? In recent years, various communication software has become popular, and many software have the function of sending voice. For some people who are inconvenient to type, this is good news. Sending voice can express what they want to say faster and more conveniently, and can also express the emotions when chatting, so it is favored by many people.

However, when you listen to the recording you sent again, you will feel that your voice is very strange, completely different from your usual voice, and even a little bit of disgust, < /span>Why is this? Which voice is your real voice?

Before exploring this problem, let’s first understand how sound is made and how it is transmitted.

As we all know, sound is produced by the vibration of objects, which is a kind of mechanical wave, which is also called sound wave. Anything that makes a sound vibrates, and human sounds are produced by the vibration of the vocal cords. After the sound is emitted, it must have a good medium to transmit it. Let’s take a look at several ways of sound transmission.

Airborne

One of the most common means of sound transmission is through the air spread. The sound travels through the air to the person’s ear, and the person hears the sound. So how does the ear work?

The human ear is generally made up of three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. When our ears perceive sound waves, these three parts have to perform their respective functions and work together. First, the external ear is responsible for collecting the mechanical waves heard, and through the synergy of the left and right ears to spatially locate them, determine where the sound comes from, and then transmit the sound through the external auditory canal. to the middle ear. After the middle ear receives the sound wave vibration, it will carry out an important conversion – converting the sound wave into solid vibration. After the conversion is complete, the vibrations of the solid body continue to conduct inward to the inner ear. The cochlea in the inner ear converts solid vibrations into nerve impulses, which travel along the auditory nerve to the nerve center of the brain, which produces hearing.

The structure of the human ear

We usually hear the sound very fast, and it seems to be a momentary thing. Do not sigh the magic of nature.

Bone conduction

Sound has another type of transmission besides air transmission way, that is bone conduction.

The famous musician Beethoven was disabled and strong, even if he was deaf, he still created the “Symphony of Destiny” that shocked the world. His story moved the world. However, have you ever wondered how the deaf person hears sound?

Famous musician Bedo Fen

In fact, as long as you learn more about Beethoven, it is not difficult to find that when he composed music, he often touched the piano with a wooden stick in his mouth. On the other hand, with the help of solid conduction and bone conduction, the sound of the piano can finally be heard.

So, what is the principle of bone conduction? First of all, when a person makes a sound, the vocal cords vibrate, but the sound does not pass through the external auditory canal, but is directly transmitted from the ossicles of the middle ear to the skull, and then from the skull to the hearing of the brain. Center, forming hearing.

Which one is the real voice?

It is not difficult to find in daily life that the sound of air conduction and bone conduction is different. At this time, we are curious, which voice is close to our original voice? In fact, after understanding the whole process of air transmission and bone transmission above, it is not difficult to find that, bone conduction undergoes less process and will not be affected by particles in the air. Therefore, bone conduction Conducted sound is closer to our own voice.

Nevertheless, this “truest sound” can only be heard by us, because solids are stronger than gases Sound travels fast, so when we listen to our own voice, we hear bone conduction sound, but when others hear our voice, they hear it through the air. The sound, pitch, timbre, etc. will be slightly changed.

Why do we find our recordings ugly?

Now we know that the sound we hear is close to our true sound, but there is still a problem that has not been solved:Why do we hear Do you feel very unpleasant or even a little disgusting when you record yourself? Why doesn’t this happen when listening to someone else’s recording?

The first reason is that we mentioned above that the sound is “distorted” when it travels through the air, pitch , timbre, etc. will be affected by the particles in the air and will be changed. Those of us who are used to listening to our original sound will naturally find this “distorted” recording unpleasant.

Secondly, when we make our own voice, the bones and tissues of our head tend to enhance the low frequency vibration, which makes the sound we hear deeper and richer,< /span>But this effect doesn’t work when listening to the recording. As a result, we tend to feel that our voices in the recordings are sharper and therefore less pleasing.

There is another reason that cannot be ignored, that is, the recordings we hear are often monophonic. The sound that arrives is stereo, so it will sound awkward. You will find that when a group of people sing on KTV, they feel that the sound they make through the microphone is not so unpleasant. Very large, close to stereo.

Finally, human psychology also plays a big role. We are accustomed to listening to the combination of bone conduction and air conduction. When we hear the pure air conduction recording, we will be very confused: Is this my own voice? ? The gap between the two voices will make people feel a little bit ashamed and unwilling to face their original voice.

Someone has done an experiment on the psychological effect of sound. In the experiment, the subjects scored multiple recordings, and the experimenters secretly mixed the subjects’ own voices into them. Because there were too many voices heard in a short period of time, some subjects would have difficulty distinguishing their own voices. Surprisingly,people who couldn’t tell their own voice rated their own voice higher, and once they heard it was their own voice, the score dropped. This experiment fully confirms that, under the influence of psychological effects, people will find their recordings unpleasant.

How to deal with this situation?

I feel bad for my voiceIt’s a normal phenomenon, and we don’t need to worry about it at all. Just as we always think we look better in the mirror than we look in the front camera of our phone,This is called the “exposure effect” in psychology, which means that we will Favorite things that are familiar to oneself. Therefore, there is absolutely no need to worry about being heard badly by others.

The correct attitude towards your own recording is that you either don’t listen to it or listen more. When you get used to the sound in your recordings, you will naturally not find it unpleasant.

Of course, whether it sounds good or bad, it is the most authentic self. Learning to accept ourselves calmly and to love ourselves better is a subject that we all have to learn throughout our lives.

References:

[1] China Digital Technology How is the sound of the hall transmitted2021-04-08

【2】 Journal of Audiology and Speech Diseases Bone conduction technology and its application2011-01-05

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Author: Yu Wen Review: Xiaoyang Proofreading Editor: Li Zi