What's the REAL reason we here it differently? Can it be demonstrated on a audio synthesizer?

I and my Helpmate both hear Tammy......as in Mammy or Sammy.

Is it only personal bandpass? Can one see this effect on a mixer? Or is this caused by a digital distortion?

i.e.....a side effect of chopping?

 

When I heard it on the radio I heard 'yearly', when I heard it on the TV, I heard 'laurel'.
The TV has a soundbar so I guess the quality/bandwidth is better.

 

The local poll posted here shows that out of 1000 people 40% heard one 40% the other, the other 20% heard both.
I believe It depends a great deal on ones age and volume level listened at.
Max.

 

I started the test knowing what were the "options". Not good.

The very first time I heard it it was "moral" for me. Non native, 71 yo, with my left ear almost deaf through the worst PC audio I ever got. Not even in the bell of Mr Gauss.

 

I clearly hear yanny when listening through monitor speakers, and laurel when listening through Sonos Play5 better quality speakers.

Fits in with the finding that yanny is perceived from the information contained within the higher frequencies of the signal, and laurel is perceived from the information contained within lower frequencies.

To my mind - the difference is explained fairly simply. - no great mystery here. The Baa/Faa perception difference is far more interesting.

The dress colour controversy was also interesting and shows stranger consequences of how the brain processes colour perception.

 

 

@wayneh
OK, now that made my evening!

 

What's the REAL reason we here it differently? Can it be demonstrated on a audio synthesizer?

I and my Helpmate both hear Tammy......as in Mammy or Sammy.

Is it only personal bandpass? Can one see this effect on a mixer? Or is this caused by a digital distortion?

i.e.....a side effect of chopping?

I have NO idea what you are talking about (even though it appears that everyone else does).

 

Ok...I will explain my post, sentence by sentence for you. The first sentence is called a question. Please answer it for me. We have heard several explanations that we don't understand. I was hoping for some clarity.

That was the reason for the second sentence, which is another question. Can this recording be reproduced on a synth........with the same effect?

The third sentence is a statement of our understanding of the word. For some reason we here the EXACT same sound. Tammy. Not Tanny.

The fourth question, questions a popular answer for this effect........personal audio bandpass. If that is true....then the effect can be changed with a simple audio mixer/equalizer....right? Which was the fifth question.

The last question affirms my suspicion of the simple explanations given. I don't think it's a frequency dependent event or effect. It's not a natural timing/distortion error.......because I believe the distortion is synthetic. If it were natural....with all the recordings in history.........it would have been noticed and explained long ago. It's some kind of play on phase or symmetry. Some are left handed and some are right handed. For hearing....we might be phase handed. I think brushing it off as something simple.......is missing something fundamental. AND nothing is more mysterious as a fundamental.

Do you have some kind of idea now?

 

Ok...I will explain my post, sentence by sentence for you. The first sentence is called a question. Please answer it for me. We have heard several explanations that we don't understand. I was hoping for some clarity.

First sentence from your post:"What's the REAL reason we here it differently?"

What is IT that we 'here' differently? How can I answer your question if I can't tell what the heck IT refers to?

That was the reason for the second sentence, which is another question. Can this recording be reproduced on a synth........with the same effect?

WHAT recording? Your post has no attachment and no links. How am I supposed to know what recording you are talking about?

The third sentence is a statement of our understanding of the word. For some reason we here the EXACT same sound. Tammy. Not Tanny.

How is either "Tammy" or "Tanny" coming into play all of a sudden? Your thread title asks about "Yanny" or "Laurel". Nothing else.

The fourth question, questions a popular answer for this effect........personal audio bandpass. If that is true....then the effect can be changed with a simple audio mixer/equalizer....right? Which was the fifth question.

The last question affirms my suspicion of the simple explanations given. I don't think it's a frequency dependent event or effect. It's not a natural timing/distortion error.......because I believe the distortion is synthetic. If it were natural....with all the recordings in history.........it would have been noticed and explained long ago. It's some kind of play on phase or symmetry. Some are left handed and some are right handed. For hearing....we might be phase handed. I think brushing it off as something simple.......is missing something fundamental. AND nothing is more mysterious as a fundamental.

Going out on a limb here, since I still have no idea what the context of your post is, I will offer the following:

What we "hear" is not just a function of the acoustic waves hitting our ears. It is also a function of our cognitive abilities, in particular the mapping of sounds to neurons and expectation bias.

For English speakers, the word "Tammy" is familiar while "Tanny" is not. So if someone says the word "Tanny", particularly in a context where "Tammy" makes sense, we will tend to hear "Tammy" and swear all day long that that was the word that was spoken. The same will be true if I were to say to someone that tomorrow is expected to be warm and summy. They may or may not catch the "error" and, if they don't, they will likely be adamant that I said "sunny". Children are more likely to catch the mistake than adults, largely because their vocabulary is still growing aggressively and so their mind is attuned to recognizing unfamiliar words and bringing them to their conscious attention.

Even when close words are both in our vocabulary, we will tend to hear the one that makes sense within the context of the discussion. This is an ability that often pays dividends. It makes us much better at correctly hearing what is being said in high noise environments. An example of this is a pilot talking to air traffic control over a poor radio channel. Because each party has a very good idea of what the other might say, they tend to "hear" what was intended fairly clearly even when others can't make out a word of it because the static is so bad.

An unrelated effect is when we have to deal with sounds that simply aren't in our native language(s). Out of all of the possible sounds that a language could use, any given language only uses a subset of them. Because distinguishing these sounds is important for proper cognition, the brain maps each of the ones used to specific neurons and those mappings become pretty set at a fairly young age (they CAN be changed later, but it is usually very difficult). So what happens to the rest of those sounds (most of which we have never heard and so don't know that they even exist)? Well, every sound has to map to something -- it's not like we are going to hear silence instead of an unfamiliar sound. Many of them get mapped to already used neurons (essentially being treated like "don't cares" in a logic function). If we later hear the unfamiliar sounds, it fires the same neuron that a familiar sounds fires and so we hear the familiar sound.

Some of these mappings are pretty common -- one classic example being the mapping of the L sound to the R sound for Japanese speakers.

This is also one reason that English speakers tend to have more difficulty than most when trying to learn a new language -- English lacks many of the significant sounds (such as "rolling r's") common to so many other languages, which makes it hard to even perceive some of those sounds, much less produce them (even the ones we can easily perceive). Also, English is a non-tonal language which makes it difficult for many of us to perceive the difference between some of the sounds in other languages that differ only in tone.

Do you have some kind of idea now?

Nope. The above aside, I have no idea what so ever.

You ask "Can this recording be reproduced..." and I ask, "WHAT recording?!".

AlbertHall talks about hearing it on the radio or the TV. Hearing WHAT? I don't recall ever hearing the word "Yanny" on either, but I'm pretty sure I've heard "Laurel" on numerous occasions, probably on both. So maybe that means that whenever the word used was "Yanny" I heard "Laurel", but that SURE seems like a stretch.

MaxHeadRoom talks about a poll, and I ask, "WHAT poll?"

atferrari talks about a test, and I ask, "WHAT test?"

I can only assume that you are all talking about something that has gotten wide coverage in the news or on social media of late, but that I have missed since I don't watch TV, listen to pop radio, or do anything remotely related to social media.

 

Oh...you really don't know. You must have been off line for a few days. Google Yanny vs Laurel.

I waited a few days before posting, to see if anyone was going to post about this.

 

tomorrow is expected to be warm and summy. They may or may not catch the "error"

I didn't catch the error reading this, let alone hearing it.

 

Oh...you really don't know. You must have been off line for a few days. Google Yanny vs Laurel.

I waited a few days before posting, to see if anyone was going to post about this.

And you didn't think it might be reasonable to post at least one link to what you were referring to?

I've been heavily on line every day -- but as I said I don't do social media, so my chances of coming across "what's trending" (and how I HATE that phrase) are pretty low.

 

I didn't catch the error reading this, let alone hearing it.

The same expectation bias is at play. It affects ALL of our senses, and then some.

We see something in a situation in which we expect to see something close, but different, and we may well be convinced that we saw exactly, and in great detail, what we expected to see.

I'm sure we've all written code with a glaring error in it but when we review the code we miss it repeatedly because we know what we meant to type and so we continue to see that instead of what we actually typed.

If you expect something to be very hot (like a soldering iron) and you accidentally touch it, you are likely to initially feel the burn and react accordingly even though it is not plugged in.

When you think about that last one, it makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary viewpoint. If you accidentally touch something hot that you have no reason to suspect is hot or cold, your response is a result of damage being done to your tissues. But if you expect it to be hot and you accidentally touch it, your response can be much quicker because it takes a lot less time to sense the touch than to sense the damage, and as a result less damage is done.

 

So I went out and tracked it down and I clearly hear "Yanny". With most illusions you can force yourself to see the alternate interpretation by willfully expecting it (a case of intentional expectation bias). No matter how hard I try on this one I can't swing it to anything remotely like "Laurel", but I have no problem swinging it to "Yammy". I can't quite swing it to "Tammy" or "Tanny". With effort I could swing it to "Whanny" and "Whammy".

 

So I went out and tracked it down and I clearly hear "Yanny". With most illusions you can force yourself to see the alternate interpretation by willfully expecting it (a case of intentional expectation bias). No matter how hard I try on this one I can't swing it to anything remotely like "Laurel", but I have no problem swinging it to "Yammy". I can't quite swing it to "Tammy" or "Tanny". With effort I could swing it to "Whanny" and "Whammy".

So to answer a question from the very first post - I suspect that an equaliser (which I assume is what was meant by mixer) will change the perception to Yanny if low frequencies are removed, and Laurel if high frequencies are removed.

.. All highly dependant on the listener's ears and the quality of the reproduction equipment. I would guess that older listeners are more likely to hear laurel.

I read about it (and heard the sample sound) on BBC news web page, which gives what seems to me to be a simple and plausible explanation. I see no great mystery here.

 

So what happens to the rest of those sounds (most of which we have never heard and so don't know that they even exist)? Well, every sound has to map to something -- it's not like we are going to hear silence instead of an unfamiliar sound. Many of them get mapped to already used neurons (essentially being treated like "don't cares" in a logic function). If we later hear the unfamiliar sounds, it fires the same neuron that a familiar sounds fires and so we hear the familiar sound.

This may explain why some listeners hear 'Yanny' and others hear 'Laurel'. If so, life experience and cultural background could be more important to perception than our sensitivity to certain frequencies.

 

So to answer a question from the very first post - I suspect that an equaliser (which I assume is what was meant by mixer) will change the perception to Yanny if low frequencies are removed, and Laurel if high frequencies are removed.

.. All highly dependant on the listener's ears and the quality of the reproduction equipment. I would guess that older listeners are more likely to hear laurel.

I read about it (and heard the sample sound) on BBC news web page, which gives what seems to me to be a simple and plausible explanation. I see no great mystery here.

I would be interested in hearing a suitably filtered version that makes me hear "Laurel". I'm not saying it can't be done -- I'm truly saying that I would be genuinely interested in hearing it and experiencing it.

Since I qualify as one of those "older listeners" and with about the age-expected loss of higher frequencies in my hearing, I would expect that I should be able to force myself to hear "Laurel", but I can't even seem to move it in that direction at all.

But trying to do so resulted in something that I haven't knowingly experienced before. Like I said, I can easily convince myself that it is really "Yammy", but every time I try to force myself to hear "Laurel" (or anything else that is outside the window of alternates that I can swing), I am always pulled back to "Yanny". Now, this might be influenced by the fact that I "know" that it is "really" "Yanny" and not "Yammy", thus establishing a stronger expectation bias in that direction.

 

I would be interested in hearing a suitably filtered version that makes me hear "Laurel"

I achieved that simply by switching between monitor speakers and hi-fi speakers. I too am old and have lousy high frequency hearing. Don't know if that makes it easier for me to hear both versions, or whether it makes it harder. I clearly heard Laurel with Hi-fi (and no hint of Yanny). I clearly heard Yanny on monitor speaker (no hint of Laurel).

Of course, it may depend on where the source sound file came from too. I bet there are people doctoring the file, either accidentally or just to be difficult.

BBC site seems to have dropped the story and the sample file.

 

I achieved that simply by switching between monitor speakers and hi-fi speakers. I too am old and have lousy high frequency hearing. Don't know if that makes it easier for me to hear both versions, or whether it makes it harder. I clearly heard Laurel with Hi-fi (and no hint of Yanny). I clearly heard Yanny on monitor speaker (no hint of Laurel).

Of course, it may depend on where the source sound file came from too. I bet there are people doctoring the file, either accidentally or just to be difficult.

BBC site seems to have dropped the story and the sample file.

I'll see if I can give that a try. Don't know if I have the right equipment to do it adequately.