Gadgetory

the Internet has found another way to divide us this time with a really weird audio file yeah this is the sound that's driving people nuts some people swear they could only hear Yanni others only hear Laurel so what's going on here which is the right answer and the answer is sort of both there's a Yanni sound that's on the higher range of the spectrum and a Laurel that's on the lower end and if you change the pitch of the recording it can help you hear one word more than the other so what is influencing our brains to hear Yanni or Laurel there are a few things that play one could be your own ears if you have some hearing loss you may not be able to pick up on the higher pitched Yanni sounds as easily you can also be influenced by the type of speakers you're using something with deep bass is gonna pick up Laurel more URI URI so I only heard Yanni on my headphones but then later at the office I heard Laurel on speakers and now my brain can go back and forth so to find out if my brain was broken I spoke with linguistic expert Abby Walker she's an assistant professor and co-director of the speech lab at Virginia Tech we think there are two things going on one is personal about the listener and one is about the equipment that they're using so essentially the the main divide and what you're hearing is about how much information you're paying to the lower frequency versus the higher frequency sounds that are going on and they're both there so it's not kind of right or wrong to pay attention to one versus the other but of course there is another question what is the original sound supposed to be the New York Times traced the origin story and it's just a poor quality recording of the word Laurel from the site vocabulary calm go to the page for Laurel and you'll find a sound file on how to pronounce it Laurel a high school student in Georgia was doing some school work and he recorded the audio coming out of his computer speakers which totally muddied it up and when you realized people were hearing two different things on his recording he shared it online it jumped from Instagram to read it to Twitter and it just blew up so before you start taking sides and breaking apart friendships consider that everyone could be right of course some people don't want to see both sides like this guy he's all for Team Yanni whatever I'm Bridget Carey what did you hear when you first played it and did it change for you overtime and while we're on the matter the dress is obviously white and gold