Why does your voice sound different when you play it back?

Question

Is that what everyone else hears when you speak??

Answer 1

Because you hear your voice mainly by bone conduction whereas others hear it just by air conduction

Answer 2

When you hear yourself speak you hear sound waves that your ears have picked up from the air, and also sound which has travelled through your skull. Other listeners don't have the benefit of that extra resonance, and neither does your recording device, so yes, unfortunately, the recording is much more like what you sound like to others. Exactly how similar you would have to judge by listening to someone else speak and then to a recording of them.
It's disappointing isn't it?

Answer 3

Yes. They hear it like you do when you play it back, because when you hear it when you are actually speaking it travels through your bone and other bits of your head and so sounds different to you. Everyone seems to hate their real voice lol

Answer 4

In addition to the lack of bone (& the rest of your head) accoustics, you're also listening to an imperfect recording, most likely an extremely imperfect recording.
Other people don't get the benefits of the bone conduction, they have to rely on a much thinner substance, air to hear your voice. If they're hearing it over the phone, or on a recording, it sounds like what you've just heard.

If you want to hear what they hear, have yourself recorded in a sound studio. If you want a friend to hear your voice close to the way you hear yourself, have them duck their head underwater next to yours and talk. It's certainly not an exact replica, but it's closer than air, and pretty easy to do.

Answer 5

Close to it, though a voice reproduced electronically doesn't exactly match it.

You hear it differently because it's resonating inside your head. The acoustics create a different sound.

That's why we sound so good when we sing in the shower--the acoustics.

Answer 6

Because you aren't hearing your own voice resonate in your head like you do when you actually say the words.

Kind of like how potato chips seems really loud when you chew them but nobody else seems to notice.

Answer 7

When you speak the sound waves travel through tissue, bones and other head masses. When you listen to the recording it is only traveling into your ear and to the bones of your ear.

Answer 8

relax! it's to do with the deficient mp3 sampling rate (132Kb/sec?). your friends ears are equally deficient. I have the same prob- I know I can sing gr8,, but unaccountably get slagged off at parties and karaoke sessions as sounding like a pig farting in a bucket.
Optical equivalents of this phenomenon obv exist, as I contemplate my Adonis lookalike in the mirror.
People are obv blind as well as deaf in the aesthetic sense

Answer 9

When you speak, you are hearing the sound vibrating throughout your skull/head; when you play it back, you do not have the vibrations, therefore it sounds different.

Answer 10

When you hear your voice you also "hear" the vibrations of the bones and such within your own body, it is sort of muffled and altered because of this - when you hear a tape you hear what others hear.