You play it back.

And suddenly you're like:

“WAIT… THAT'S WHAT I SOUND LIKE?!” 😭

Don't worry. You haven't been walking around with a completely different voice.

There's actually a simple reason your recorded voice sounds different from the voice you hear when you're speaking.

When other people hear you talk, sound travels through the air and enters their ears.

But when you speak, you hear your voice in two ways:

Through the air and through vibrations travelling through the bones and tissues of your head.

These vibrations reach your inner ear and change the way you perceive the sound of your own voice.

A recording, however, mostly captures the sound travelling through the air.

So when you play it back, you're hearing your voice more like other people hear it.

Which explains why you might listen to a recording and immediately think:

“Who gave this person permission to sound like that?” 😂

Your voice hasn't suddenly changed.

Your brain is simply comparing a familiar version of your voice with a version you're not used to hearing.

And this is why hearing yourself in a recording can feel surprisingly strange at first.

Quick medical fact: When you speak, bone conduction contributes to how you hear your own voice, while recordings mainly capture airborne sound.

So yes…

That voice you hear in the recording is much closer to what everyone else has been hearing this whole time. 😭🎙️