Why do we hate our own voice recorded on tape?

You know how your own voice sounds, right? After all, you hear it every time you say it. But when it is recorded and reproduced, it sounds somehow different, in a strange way, and besides it is much worse. This is enough to make most people cringe from the sound itself. So why does our voice become so different when we hear it from the outside?

Vibration pathways

When we say, the vocal cords in our larynx vibrate to produce a sound that we characterize with speech. These vibrations are conducted through the air and into the outer ear of the listener, where they contact the tympanic membrane, causing it to vibrate.

These vibrations then reach the cochlea, which translates them into electrical impulses to then enter the brain through the auditory nerve. Air conduction is how we perceive not only our own voice, but also other sounds of the surrounding world.

However, when you hear how you say, these vibrations also take another, more direct route to the snail. Sound is transmitted through the mechanical properties of the skull, including bones and soft tissues.

Passing through these more dense structures, vibrations of a lower frequency intensify, which leads to a much deeper sound reaching the cochlea. Thus, our voice seems to us more complete and lower than it is.

This is normal?

Although this seems strange, but this is completely normal. If you hear someone say, be sure, in their head they sound deeper than they really are. And if they have ever heard the recording of their voice, they will wonder just as surprised as you.

Just remember that the voice you hear from the recording, everyone else hears all the time, and it seems so different, because it's not what you're used to.

Therefore, although you can continue to hate the sound of your own voice, never worry - it's absolutely normal and probably not as bad as you think.