Do You Hear ‘Yanny’ Or ‘Laurel’ In This Recording? [Listen]
The internet exploded last night with people hearing either "Yanny" or "Laurel" in this audio recording.
This is the blue and black/white and gold dress in audio form. What is happening in this recording? Why do some people hear "Yanny" (pronounced like Granny) or "Laurel" (pronounced like Law-ruhl)?
What do you hear?
So WHY is this happening?
Brad Story, Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing at The University of Arizona, spoke with CNN and gave his explanation.
"It's not a very high quality. And that in itself allows there to be some ambiguity already." You have to take into account the way people are listening to the recording. Some are listening on their mobile devices, others on a stereo, or headphones.
"When I analyzed the recording of Laurel, that third resonance is very high for the L. It drops for the R and then it rises again for the L," he said. "The interesting thing about the word Yanny is that the second frequency that our vocal track produces follows almost the same path, in terms of what it looks like spectrographically, as Laurel."
In more layman's terms:
"If you have a low quality of recording, it's not surprising some people would confuse the second and third resonances flipped around, and hear Yanny instead of Laurel."
He goes on to say that the original recording most likely says "Laurel".
After doing some pitch tests ourselves, you can definitely change what you hear. I heard "Yanny" since last night. After the audio file was pitched up, I finally heard "Laurel". Others around our building that heard "Laurel" first, were able to hear "Yanny" after messing with the pitch of the recording.