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Why does your voice sound different on a recording​?

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📓 The short answer

When you speak, you hear yourself through both air and bone conduction, which makes your voice sound deeper. A recording captures only air conduction, losing the lower tones—so your voice sounds higher and unfamiliar.

📚 The long answer

One of the reasons I decided to start a newsletter and not a podcast or YouTube channel is because — like many others — I cringe at the sound of my recorded voice. 😬

But why does our voice sound so different to us compared to how others hear it? Let's jump in with a refresher on how our ears work (if you prefer a video, I recommend this one which includes some lovely, memoji-level animation):

Sound waves traveling through the air enter the ear canal and make the ear drum vibrate. This sets off subsequent vibrations in three tiny bones, known as the ossicles, in the middle ear. These bones amplify the vibrations and send them to the cochlea, a pea-sized, snail-shaped organ in the inner ear.

Inside the cochlea, fluid movement stimulates tiny hair-like structures, triggering neurotransmitters that send electrical signals to the brain via the auditory nerve. These signals are interpreted as sound in the brain.

Air conduction vs. bone conduction

But technically speaking, we hear in two ways: air conduction (described above) and bone conduction.

Bone conduction is when sound waves reach the cochlea directly by transmitting through our head. Because bones resonate with lower frequencies more efficiently, bone conduction enhances the deeper tones of our voice.

Why your recorded voice sounds different

When we speak, we're hearing a combination of air conduction and bone conduction. This mix of air and bone conduction makes our voice sound deeper to ourselves.

On a recording, only air conduction is at play — without bone conduction, the lower tones are lost. This is why our voice on recordings tends to sound higher to ourselves.

The reason why we dislike the true sound of our voice is because it's different from the way we've heard ourselves all our lives. The disconnect between how we think we sound and how we actually sound creates cognitive dissonance — or as the kids say, cringe.

--- Thanks for reading this week's newsletter! If you have any thoughts, questions, or favorite GIFs, my inbox is always open. Just hit reply to send me a note! :) ​ All my best, Caitlin ​Click here to read five facts about Caitlin​

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​Sources for this week's newsletter​

🌐 Wikipedia article of the week

​Faxlore​

"Faxlore is a sort of folklore: humorous texts, folk poetry, folk art, and urban legends that are circulated, not by word of mouth, but by fax machine. Xeroxlore or photocopylore is similar material circulated by photocopying....

Some faxlore is relatively harmless.... Other sorts of faxlore have had more serious consequences..... An early example of a faxlore warning about tattoo stickers allegedly laced with drugs."

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👀 Catch up on other curious questions

• ​​​​Does soap need bubbles to clean?​​
• ​How do noise-cancelling headphones work?​​
• ​Why do we rub our eyes when we are tired?​​

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