0563 – The Weird Things About Hearing Yourself Through Headphones

2022.07.17 – 0563 – The Weird Things About Hearing Yourself Through Headphones

Hearing yourself through headphones

“Headphones take your ears from the side of your head

 and put them right in front of your mouth

so you can hear exactly what you sound like to others.”

Rachel Corbett, Podcast Trainer[1]

Think about it, no-one else on earth hears our voice as we ourselves do.

While an audience hears only the sound as vibrations through the air (either in person or via an electronic medium such as loudspeaker or headphones), we hear not only those vibrations through the air (at close range of course, through our ears just a few inches from our mouth), but also ‘internally’ as a result of the vibrations and reflections of sound in our body’s resonators (our chest, mouth and nasal cavities) and also through our skull bone.

Only we hear that unique combination of sounds, and so we imagine that others hear us the same way as we hear ourselves. Until we hear a recording.

And so, the sound of hearing your voice heard through speakers, headphones or on video for the first time can be unnerving: because we are hearing ourselves as others hear us.

You should therefore be careful not to dismiss your voice as ‘funny’, ‘not good enough’ or ‘weird-sounding’: that is your own perception and unlikely to be one shared by others who have always heard you that way. It’s not that we don’t like our voice, it’s just the disconnect between not recognising it – and yet knowing that it is actually us.

[1] https://rachelcorbett.com.au/blog/why-headphones-are-important/

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