'Yanny vs. Laurel' Reveals Flaws In How We Listen To Audio (theproaudiofiles.com)

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days, you've probably heard about the controversy over "Yanny" and "Laurel." The internet has been abuzz over an audio clip in which the name being said depends on the listener. Some hear "Laurel" while others hear "Yanny." Ian Vargo, an audio enthusiast who spends most of his working hours of the day listening to and editing audio, helps explain why we hear the name that we do: Human speech is actually composed of many frequencies, in part because we have a resonant chest cavity which creates lower frequencies, and the throat and mouth which creates higher frequencies. The word "laurel" contains a combination of both which are therefore present in the original recording at vocabulary.com, but the clip that you most likely heard has accentuated higher frequencies due to imperfections in the audio that were created by data compression. To make it worse, the playback device that many people first heard the audio clip playing out of was probably a speaker system built into a cellular phone, which is too small to accurately recreate low frequencies.

This helpful interactive tool from The New York Times allows you to use a slider to more clearly hear one or the other. Pitch shifting the audio clip up seems to accentuate "laurel" whereas shifting it down accentuates "yanny." In summary, this perfect storm of the human voice creating both low and high frequencies, the audio clip having been subject to data compression used to create smaller, more convenient files, and our tendency to listen out of devices with subpar playback components lead to an apparent near-even split of the population hearing "laurel" or "yanny."

Comments

I listened to it backward

[93 Escort Wagon]

And I heard “Turn me on, dead man” - but my wife swore she heard “Number nine”.

Re:I listened to it backward

[mentil]

All I can hear is "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn". Might be a resonance effect due to my speakers being pentacle-shaped. Or I just haven't cleaned out enough of the blood that oozes out of them periodically...

Both and neither

[reboot246]

I heard Yanny and Laurel, but after a while I heard Jelly.

I don't live under a rock

[aglider]

Nonetheless I don't spend time in this foolish stuff. Just slashdot.