Almost everyone dislikes hearing a recording of their own voice. The usual explanation — that we are simply embarrassed — is only half of it. The other half is physics.
When you speak, the sound reaches your ears by two routes at once. Some of it travels out of your mouth, through the air and back into your ears, exactly as it reaches anyone else. The rest travels through the bones and soft tissue of your head directly to the inner ear. That second route carries low frequencies much better than high ones, so the voice you hear while speaking is noticeably deeper and fuller than the one leaving your mouth.
A recording contains only the first route. When you play it back, the low frequencies that your skull had been generously adding are gone. The voice is thinner and higher, and it sounds wrong — not because the recording is inaccurate, but because it is accurate and you have never heard that version before.
There is a small consolation. Everyone else has only ever heard the recorded version, so the voice that sounds wrong to you is the one your friends recognise. The version you prefer is one that nobody else has access to.
Singers and radio presenters stop noticing the difference within weeks of hearing themselves regularly. The dislike is not a fixed fact about the voice. It is unfamiliarity, and unfamiliarity ends with exposure.
Vocabulary in this text
- accurate /ˈækjɚət/ — correct and without mistakes
- prefer /pɹəˈfɝ/ — to like one thing more than another
- notice /ˈnoʊtəs/ — to see or become aware of something
- exposure /ɪkˈspoʊʒɚ/ — the state of being affected by something