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The article is wrong (edit: it might be more complicated; see discussion below). The reason you can hear both is because someone took the high frequencies of "y
by rcthompson 8y ago
The article is wrong (edit: it might be more complicated; see discussion below). The reason you can hear both is because someone took the high frequencies of "yanny" and combined them with the low frequencies of "laurel". If you apply appropriate high-pass and low-pass filters, you will consistently hear yanny and laurel respectively (assuming your speakers/headphones are capable of reproducing all the required frequencies and your ears are capable of hearing them). Essentially, it's the audio equivalent of the Einstein/Monroe illusion [1]. So this audio illusion doesn't imply that yanny sounds like laurel any more than the visual illusion implies that Einstein looks like Marilyn Monroe. It might be incidentally true that yanny and laurel do in fact sound similar (and this may in turn make the illusion more convincing), but you could probably do the same trick with any two words that have similar cadences, no matter how different they sound.
[1]: http://www.123opticalillusions.com/pages/albert-einstein-marilyn-monroe.php http://www.123opticalillusions.com/pages/albert-einstein-mar...
- Grue3 8y agoThe audio was derived entirely from a recording of a man saying "laurel" (can be heard here: [1]). There's no recording of him saying "yanny" because it isn't a word. The high frequencies of "laurel" do in fact sound like "yanny". [1] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel
- rcthompson 8y agoWell, if someone doctored a recording of "laurel" to make it sound like "yanny" and then mixed it back into the original recording of laurel (or did something mathematically equivalent), then maybe both the article and my comment are correct.
- tristanj 8y agoMixing two audio files is contrary to what the people who posted this to instagram & twitter stated they did.
- tristanj 8y ago> The reason you can hear both is because someone took the high frequencies of "yanny" and combined them with the low frequencies of "laurel". No, I very much doubt this is a doctored recording. Wired did an interview with the person(s) who first discovered it [0]. They played the pronunciation of "laurel" from vocabulary.com [1] on their computer and re-recorded the audio to their phone, then posted it to instagram. The audio sounds distorted because it was played through laptop speakers and recorded again with a microphone. The "laurel/yanny" effect is also reproducible with the audio from the original source at [1]. You don't need to doctor the audio to hear it. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/yanny-and-laurel-true-history/ https://www.wired.com/story/yanny-and-laurel-true-history/ [1] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel
- Kiro 8y agoNope, you are completely wrong. You're spreading desinformation like it's fact.
- stdclass 8y agoI ran the original sample from vocabulary.com through the Ableton Equalizer with a low-cut and high-cut respectively and can't hear anything then a clear "Laurel" every time.