You hear your voice differently (and often dislike it) when you hear it recorded because you're used to hearing it both externally and internally.
Here's a breakdown of why your voice sounds "bad" to you when you hear it recorded:
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Bone Conduction vs. Air Conduction: When you speak, you hear your voice in two ways:
- Air conduction: Sound waves travel through the air to your outer ear, then to your middle and inner ear. This is how everyone else hears you.
- Bone conduction: Vibrations from your vocal cords travel directly through the bones in your head to your inner ear. This adds lower frequencies and resonance that others don't hear.
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The "Missing" Frequencies: The internal bone conduction emphasizes lower frequencies, making your voice sound richer and deeper to yourself. When you hear a recording, you're only hearing the air-conducted sound, which lacks those familiar low frequencies. This difference can be jarring, making your voice sound higher, thinner, or "weaker" than you perceive it.
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Novelty and Expectation: You are simply not used to hearing your voice as others hear it. You have an expectation of what your voice sounds like based on your internal experience. The recorded voice deviates from this expectation, leading to a feeling of discomfort or dislike.
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Critical Self-Perception: We are often more critical of ourselves than we are of others. You might focus on imperfections or nuances in your recorded voice that you wouldn't even notice in someone else's.
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It's Not Actually Bad: The key takeaway is that your recorded voice isn't necessarily bad; it's just different from what you're accustomed to. It's what everyone else has always heard.
In short, the difference between what you think your voice sounds like and what it actually sounds like stems from the way your body processes the sound of your own voice. Hearing it recorded removes the familiar "depth" created by bone conduction.
