It is common to hear your own voice on a recording and find it surprisingly different, even unfamiliar. This discrepancy arises from the distinct ways sound reaches our inner ear, depending on whether it originates from within our body or from an external source. Understanding these pathways explains why your internal perception of your voice differs from its external reality.
How You Hear Your Own Voice
When you speak, you perceive your voice through two main mechanisms: air conduction and bone conduction. Air conduction involves sound waves traveling through the air, entering your ear canal, and causing your eardrum to vibrate. These vibrations then pass through the middle ear bones (ossicles) to the cochlea, which translates them into nerve signals for your brain to interpret as sound. This is the standard way all external sounds are heard.
In addition to air conduction, your own vocalizations create vibrations within your skull and soft tissues. These vibrations travel directly through your bones to your cochlea, bypassing the outer and middle ear structures. This process, known as bone conduction, transmits lower frequencies more efficiently, adding a deeper, fuller resonance to your voice. Consequently, the voice you hear in your head is a combination of both air-conducted and bone-conducted sound.
How Others Hear Your Voice
When another person hears your voice, or when your voice is captured by a recording device, the sound transmission relies solely on air conduction. The sound waves travel through the air from your mouth to the listener’s ears or the microphone. This means the bone-conducted component, which gives your voice its internal richness and lower frequencies, is entirely absent for external listeners and recordings.
Because only the air-conducted sound is perceived externally, your voice may sound thinner or higher-pitched to others than it does to you. A recording provides a more accurate representation of how your voice sounds to the world outside your head.
Why Your Recorded Voice Sounds Different
The reason your recorded voice sounds different stems from the contrast between your accustomed internal perception and the external reality. Your brain has spent a lifetime interpreting your voice as a blend of both air and bone conduction, creating an expectation of a deeper, more resonant sound. When you hear a recording, you are only receiving the air-conducted sound, which lacks the lower frequencies and internal resonance provided by bone conduction.
This mismatch between your internal expectation and the recorded sound can be surprising or unsettling, as it does not align with the voice you are accustomed to hearing. The initial discomfort often experienced upon hearing a recording of one’s own voice is a result of this cognitive dissonance.