Yanny or Laurel is an auditory illusion of a re-recording of a vocabulary word plus added background sounds, also mixed into the recording, which became popular in May 2018.
However, Whether you hear Yanny or Laurel is in part due to the volume at which you perceive certain frequencies. When the volume is turned back up, or if the audio is played on speakers with higher bass response, they'll probably hear Laurel.
The acoustic information that makes us hear Yanny is higher frequency than the acoustic information that makes us hear Laurel. It's a phenomenon you can mimic on a computer, he says: if you remove all the low frequencies, you hear Yanny. If you remove the high frequencies, you hear Laurel.
So if you're hearing “Laurel,” you're likely picking up on the lower frequency. If you hear “Yanny,” you're picking up on the higher frequency. It really comes down to how our brains pick up on and interpret these frequencies, Rory Turnbull, a professor of linguistics at the University of Hawaii, said.
There is a definitive answer. Sorry, Team Yanny, but multiple news outlets have confirmed that the infamous audio clip comes from Vocabulary.com, where it serves as the pronunciation feature for the word “laurel,” defined as “a wreath worn on the head, usually as a symbol of victory.”
Watch the video below:
Please be sincere with me, I don’t want to believe this. I know what I heard. What can you hear? Yanny or Laurel? pic.twitter.com/EwZTUWMMOk
— JJ. Omojuwa (@Omojuwa) April 6, 2020
Posted: at | |