I pulled up the same website on two different computers–the laptop, which puts sound out to an Oontz Angle Bluetooth speaker and my desktop media computer, which feeds out to a powered subwoofer that’s set up a little bass heavy and two powered speakers. The laptop (and my phone) say “Yanny” and I can’t make them sound any different. The media computer says “Laurel.” I can get both computers going and they each make their own sound that I can’t get to change no matter what. Although I have Audacity on my laptop, I could fuck about with that I guess but yawn.
Anyway, my ears are the same no matter which source I’m listening to, so I say it’s not a perception thing so much as it is an equipment thing.
Not necessarily. Which one you hear seems to be from the relative intensity of low vs. high frequencies. Although it tends to be that people lose high frequency sensitivity as they get older, this is by no means the only form of hearing loss. Someone with hearing damage to the lower registers is likely to hear Yanny.
Not to mention that most computer/phone speakers/headphones are absolute garbage (especially for bass) and their frequency response will affect the result.
The hystersis effect of the sound also indicates that there’s some priming/expectation psychology at work. I could eventually hear Yanny, but it still seems strange because Laurel is a perfectly reasonable word and name, while Yanny is nonsense.
At first it was clearly Yammy. Then I tried that interactive tool and after sliding it several notches to the left I heard Laurel. Now it is Laurel at neutral and only Yammy at several notches to the right.
I believe that’s exactly what it is - the hybrid image thing sprang immediately to mind when I encountered this example.
The linked article claims that the human brain can’t process both at once; I don’t believe that’s true (I can listen to multiple simultaneous conversations in a room full of people, for example)
Unlike the hybrid images, which are partly dependent on the physical focus properties of our eyes, the Laurel/Yanny thing just requires:
[ul]
[li]Good quality audio equipment (i.e. a decent soundcard and headphones)[/li][li]Moderately acute hearing[/li][li]The capacity for careful, but detached listening[/li][/ul]
The reason this one is producing argument and controversy is that not everyone has all three of those things - especially the first one.
Tried again on my home computer speakers, which are fairly junky compared to my noise cancelling headphone at work. Clear Yanny here, as compared to Laurel on the headphones.
With one step to the left on the NY Times site, I can easily alternate hearing Laurel and Yanny at will. Kinda neat how bimodal it was. With the better headphones, I could only barely hear Yanny with the slider all the way to the right.
I claim that the speakers are by far the dominant factor here, but that there is a clear sensory balance point. I also claim that on good speakers, Laurel is dominant, but phones and shit have notoriously poor bass response and that probably explains the strong Yanny showing.
I doubt very much that hearing acuity has anything significant to do with this phenomenon.
I have done the test where you listen to ultra low and high frequency tones to find the range of your hearing and my result was typical for someone of my age (40)
But I can easily hear either Yanny or Laurel. The “Yanny” is not particularly high-pitched, and doesn’t seem to rely on high harmonics. And Laurel is not that low either.
I think the real cause is simply that the recording is noisy. The brain is very good at filtering out voices from noise, it has to be.
But here, there are two valid-sounding interpretations of the sound wave: A deep voice saying “Laurel” with some wheezing background noise, or a lighter voice saying “Yanny” with some low drone / reverb in the background.
I more or less agree, although I wonder–even aside from raw acuity, are there differences in perceived loudness across the frequency spectrum between people?
It’s clear that factors such as the frequency response of the speakers makes a difference (for me, there was an enormous difference between good headphones and crappy computer speakers). And the playback device itself has some frequency characteristics.
But that doesn’t explain why two people would hear different words from the same device. I agree that basic hearing acuity is not a great explanation, since as you say the Yanny sound is not really that high pitched. But if the perceived loudness of high vs. low frequencies just happens to be different, that could explain it.
There’s definitely some sort of frequency or fidelity angle to it - I can hear both names simultaneously on my laptop and headphones at home (which both are quality branded kit), but on another machine with simpler headphones (but the same ears), I can only hear Laurel
I think the Yanny bit is in a very narrow band - if you have equipment or ears that struggles with that specific range, you’re going to hear Laurel only. The reverse may also be true.
While I’m sure there’s a bit of that going on, the way this discovery was made was by somebody going to vocabulary.com and playing the sound sample directly from the site and being surprised when she heard “yanny” instead of “laurel,” so clearly at least some people (like myself and the originator of the viral post) have heard it clearly on the direct audio sample.
Like I said, when I heard it (which I can’t anymore for whatever reason), it was a distinct, absolutely clear “yanny.” No hissing or tones or anything weird. It just sounded like a person saying “yanny.” I tried to hear “laurel,” and couldn’t bring my brain to do it. It’s just really, really weird, as the sounds of both words have little in common. It got to the point that I thought the video was just screwing with me, randomly throwing in “laurels” and “yannies,” which is why I originally went to find the vocabulary.com sample, where the same effect was present. It’s just a bizarre, bizarre effect.
I first listened to this on the (UK) Times online edition, and all I could hear was Yanny/Yammy.
However, after futzing around with the NY Times tool linked above I seem to have “trained” myself to be able to hear both simultaneously, even if I go back to the UK Times version where originally I could only hear Yanny/Yammy.
I never did hear ‘Yanny’ on that thing. It started off ‘Laurel’ in the now-familiar, slightly-higher-than-average male voice. Their raising the pitch a good bit turned it into something like ‘Lyal’ and their lowering it well below the level I’ve ever heard an actual person talk at turned it into something like ‘Youey’.
