which one are you?

topic of the day 058 & video of the day 051

Yanny or Laurel?

original tweet

What, who, when, how, why? Then, so?

When I found out of this debate through reddit (that guy who made anime videos ... here it is!), I didn't know what it was about and even after I went to the original tweet, I could only heard one of the names. It was until REACT did a quick reaction video that I know this is another case of the dress, now involving the sense of hearing rather than the sight. Since at first people would hear only one over the other and swore by it even after repeating listen, it certainly has the same amount of intrigue and discussion around it.

Hearing from a neuroscientist, we know that the original recording is not of high quality and probably as a result of repeated recording, it becomes distorted hence becoming unclear whether it was one or the other. Another possible deduction is that the names have difference in frequency, with Laurel being in the lower while Yanny being in the higher wavelength. Because of the distortion, the high frequencies would be emphasized more but whether people have problem to register that or putting on headphones that wouldn't register that, they could only hear the lower frequency for example.

About changing the pitch of an audio clip, he compares it to how we can change the pitch of our voice and we can change the frequency that our mouth and tongue is emphasizing. We can still hear "hi" whether we change the pitch from low to high but it's more complicated regarding this instance whereby man tends to have lower pitch voice while woman the opposite. The former with longer vocal tracks would make sense to be paired with the frequency of  Laurel while the latter's shorter vocal tracks with Yanny.

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From this video, he is emphasizing the concept of priming whereby if you do not know the two choices to choose from, you might hear neither of them.

The devices you are hearing the audio on would affect its sound quality and in turns what you will hear.

Again, he touches on the different pitch of frequencies, giving the factor of age into the mix as well.

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The neuroscientist gives a nice hypothesis that it is all about what's in your ears, what's around your ears and what's in your mind. Everyone is correct no matter what they hear.