Ever wondered what your voice sounds like to other people, only to cringe with embarrassment when you hear it played back on a recording?
Well it turns out there is a good reason for this, as our voices scientifically sound different when heard played back because of less distortion. If you're really curious to find out, there's a way you can hear how you really sound without an audio device - and it may freak you out.
The method has been brought to light by one woman only known as Stevie on social media, who demonstrated the trick in a viral TikTok video that has racked up over 2.1m likes. "This might ruin your life, but I'm about to teach you a way to hear your voice as it normally sounds without having to record yourself," she said.
"And you can hear it as you talk in the moment. It's a little bit freaky, but the whole reason why your voice sounds so different when you talk normally compared to when you hear yourself from a recording - it's because when you're hearing your voice from an outside source other than yourself - you're basically hearing the sound waves of your voice with no distortion.
"So they only have air molecules to bounce on before it reaches your ears. Whereas when you talk, and you just listen to yourself talk in the moment, the sound waves of your voice are bouncing against the bones in your skull, which basically conduct them, which can cause a lot of distortion."
She then places both her hands vertically on her cheeks by the ears with palms facing towards her head. In this position, you should be able to hear how your voice sounds to others when you speak.
Stevie explained: "So a way to filter out a lot of this distortion and I have no idea how it works -you get your hands like this,and you put them up against your cheekbones just before your ears and then you start talking."
Fans were shocked to learn how they speak, with some realising they sound completely different to what they initially believed.
"My voice sounds so much softer than I thought it was," read one comment. "No wonder I always get ‘huh’ or ‘what’ comments. I thought they just weren’t listening."
Another person who tried the trick said: "I always thought I had a really deep voice," while a third penned: "Bye I sound like a hamster on helium."
While the majority of comments said their voice sounded higher, one particularly stunned person said: "I have a RASPY VOICE? What in the hellllll."
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