{"id":10793,"date":"2020-05-26T19:08:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T23:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=10793"},"modified":"2025-03-20T12:06:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T16:06:28","slug":"why-dislike-your-own-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/why-dislike-your-own-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you don’t like the sound of your own voice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Illustration:<\/strong> Jordan Moss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you love the sound of your own voice, you\u2019re a very lucky person; you\u2019ve been blessed with either an extraordinary voice or extraordinary self-confidence.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For the rest of us, listening to recordings of our own voice can be downright painful. Let\u2019s take a look at the acoustic and psychoacoustic<\/a> reasons why you don\u2019t like the sound of your own voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voice to verse\u2014anywhere. With the addition of Splice Mic, you can instantly test and record ideas, explore genres, and unlock new creative possibilities, all from <\/strong>the Splice mobile app.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why your voice sounds different to you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sounds reverberate and reflect off of objects \u2013 this is why different listening environments matter. Unless you\u2019re in an anechoic chamber, when you hear a sound, you don\u2019t just hear the sound itself, but also the reverberations reflecting from your surroundings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you speak, something similar happens. Others hear the sound that comes from your mouth, and the reverberations of the space you\u2019re in. But, they don\u2019t perceive the reverberations happening inside your body<\/em>. When you speak, you produce a sound that travels from your lungs up through your cranial cavity and sinuses, eventually reaching your ears from the inside of your body \u2013 and no one else hears it except for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although normally you hear sound that’s traveling through air, don\u2019t forget that sound can also travel through other mediums. Your bones, and specifically your skull, conduct sound too! When you speak, you perceive the bone-conducted sound that others aren’t able to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bone-conducted sound typically sounds lower in pitch compared to air-conducted sound. This means that when you listen to your own recorded voice, it tends to sound less ‘rich’ and ‘full,’ and more ‘thin’ and ‘nasal’ because you\u2019re no longer hearing the lower-frequency, bone-conducted portion of the sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why you don’t like the sound of your own voice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But no one else perceives the internal, bone-conducted version of your speaking voice, so bone conduction alone doesn\u2019t explain why we tend to have a strong negative reaction to listening back to ourselves speaking. There’s a psychological explanation for why \u201cvoice-confrontation\u201d \u2014 processing the difference between how our voices sound and how we expect them to sound \u2014 makes us cringe so much. As described by late psychologists Holzman and Rousey<\/a> in 1966, \u201cvoice confrontation reactions are not to be attributed solely to the physical differences between one’s speaking voice and the recorded voice.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Marc Pell<\/a>, a neuroscientist at McGill University, \u201cwhen we hear our isolated voice which is disembodied from the rest of our behavior, we may go through the automatic process of evaluating our own voice in the way we routinely do with other people\u2019s voices\u2026 I think we then compare our own impressions of the voice to how other people must evaluate us socially, leading many people to be upset or dissatisfied with the way they sound because the impressions formed do not fit with social traits they wish to project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the difference in the sound isn\u2019t the only reason why we cringe at hearing our own voices. We don’t sound like the person we think we sound like, and we don\u2019t like that. This can be particularly challenging for individuals with gender dysphoria; perceiving that your voice sounds like the wrong gender can be extremely difficult. According to Martin Birchall<\/a>, professor of laryngology at University College London, \u201cwe like to think that the way we are talking fits with our own gender identity and when we feel we are in the wrong body or our voice isn\u2019t representative of who we are, then that can be a major deal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, if you don\u2019t like the sound of your voice, you\u2019re not alone, and there are good scientific explanations for this common phenomenon. Understanding these reasons has helped me come to better terms with my own voice, of which I am very self conscious. I\u2019m a little better at dealing with my voice after educating myself on the topic, but in case that doesn\u2019t really help for you, I recommend starting with some EQ and reverb to taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Use Splice Mobile to instantly test and record ideas, explore genres, and unlock new creative possibilities\u2014all from your phone:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Download Splice Mobile<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s take a look at the anatomical and acoustical reasons behind why most people don\u2019t like the sound of their own voice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":10794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1696],"tags":[1712,1249],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy you don't like the sound of your own voice - Blog | Splice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let\u2019s take a look at the anatomical and acoustical reasons behind why most people don\u2019t like the sound of their own voice.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/why-dislike-your-own-voice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why you don't like the sound of your own voice - 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