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If you’re anything like me, you spent most of May 16th, 2018 entrenched in debate with friends, family and coworkers. Is it ‘Yanny’ or ‘Laurel’?
Early in the morning, my wife asked me which I heard when she played the audio on her iPhone. I immediately said ‘Yanny’ and she looked at me, bewildered. I asked her, “how do you possibly hear Laurel?”
As someone who grew up infatuated with sound, and even studied it in college for seven years (Go Bees!) I was instantly fascinated with how we could each be hearing entirely different words. I spend most working hours of every day listening to and editing audio, and part of my profession involves an understanding that our society listens to media on playback devices ranging greatly in both quality and cost. So, I decided to take a listen on the monitors in my home studio, which certainly provide a better sonic experience than the speakers on an iPhone.
The word being spoken was clearly ‘laurel’. The version that you most likely heard originated from the vocabulary.com audio clip demonstrating proper pronunciation of the word ‘laurel’ (sorry, team ‘yanny’), and had probably been downloaded, re-uploaded and subsequently sonically mangled by the means with which we regularly share and consume media.
Read more here. (The Pro Audio Files)
Interesting read.
Early in the morning, my wife asked me which I heard when she played the audio on her iPhone. I immediately said ‘Yanny’ and she looked at me, bewildered. I asked her, “how do you possibly hear Laurel?”
As someone who grew up infatuated with sound, and even studied it in college for seven years (Go Bees!) I was instantly fascinated with how we could each be hearing entirely different words. I spend most working hours of every day listening to and editing audio, and part of my profession involves an understanding that our society listens to media on playback devices ranging greatly in both quality and cost. So, I decided to take a listen on the monitors in my home studio, which certainly provide a better sonic experience than the speakers on an iPhone.
The word being spoken was clearly ‘laurel’. The version that you most likely heard originated from the vocabulary.com audio clip demonstrating proper pronunciation of the word ‘laurel’ (sorry, team ‘yanny’), and had probably been downloaded, re-uploaded and subsequently sonically mangled by the means with which we regularly share and consume media.
Read more here. (The Pro Audio Files)
Interesting read.
