Why does our voice sound different on a recording? It is very likely that you have already found the sound of your voice strange after sending an audio to someone, as it sounds like something else, compared to the one that is inside your mind, or even to the one you hear while talking to someone, without recording.
What basically happens is that the auditory mechanisms are deeply immersed in the inner area of the ear. Sound reaches the inner ear in two different ways, and most of what we hear is a result of air conduction.
These sound waves reach the outer ear and travel through the eardrum and middle ear to the cochlea, which is the fluid-filled spiral organ in the inner ear that is responsible for translating these waves to the brain. However, air is not the only way for sounds to reach the inner ear. Bones and tissues within the head can also conduct sound waves directly to the cochlea.
And this is where the question of strangeness in the voice resides. It’s just that when a person speaks, the vocal cords create sound waves that travel through the air to reach the inner ear, but the bones and tissues in the head also conduct these sound waves directly to the cochlea.
Does it sound like we’re speaking Greek? Let’s summarize: the voice you hear in your head when you speak is the result of both transmission methods. However, when you hear your voice on a recording, you are only hearing sounds transmitted by air conduction. Because you’re missing the part of the sound that comes from bone conduction inside your head, your voice sounds different to you on a recording.
When you speak and hear your own voice inside your head, your head bones and tissues tend to raise lower frequency vibrations, so the voice sounds fuller and deeper than it actually is. On recording, the voice often sounds louder and weaker than you think it should.
Source: Wonderopolis , Scientific American
