Different voice
Very often, when we record our voice and hear it, it does not sound like our voice. Why?
V. Bhalakumar
Chennai
Human voice is featured with a range of audio frequencies and their intensity patterns. Human auditory sensory system can recognize frequencies ranging from 20 Hz through 20,000 Hz (one Hz, called, Hertz, is one full wave per second).
We recognize a person by simply listening to his/her voice, even without directly seeing him/her, because of the uniqueness of the combination of vocal audio frequencies, each individual has by birth and by physical development.
When a person speaks or sings, his/her voice carries such a unique sound pattern through air to our ears. Hence, what we listen as the voice of a person is what is carried from his/her voice through air.
But there is a difference in how we hear other’s voice and how we hear our own voice. We listen to our voice, when we speak aloud, through two carrier routes; one, through the usual aerial medium and the other, through the anatomical system of our own jaws, throat and palate.
Our voice, when we speak aloud, goes into the air and the audio vibrations in the air are carried through the aerial medium to our ears as they are heard by others around us. Our voice, when we speak, is also partly and simultaneously carried to our ears through the anatomical (mainly orthopedic) parts of our jaws and palate to our ears because they have a physical (skull) contact to our ears.
The middle part of each of our ears has an opening into our throat through a tract called, ‘Eustachian tube’ through which also the sounds we make are partially carried to the ears. Audio frequencies are modulated according to the medium they travel through.
Therefore, our own voice, as we speak aloud and hear, is the combined patterns of sound carried to our auditory sensory system through both air and our own mouth (skull) parts. When we record our voice, it is only that kind and portion of our voice which is carried through air that is recorded.
It is similar to the one that is heard by others around us. When we listen to such recorded voice of ours, it ‘sounds’ different because this time our ears get only that part of our voice which has been carried through air and not along with the portion of our voice pattern that would be otherwise reaching them through jaws, palate and Eustachian tube when we speak.
