Laurel or Yanny? Audio clip spurs online debate

Do you hear what I hear? That is the question after a short audio clip sparked a social media debate worldwide in recent days about whether the word being heard in the clip is “Yanny” or “Laurel”.

The differences in how people hear — reminiscent of the dress-color debate that erupted three years ago when online viewers of a dress differed over the colors they saw — raised questions about whether the mind and ear can be out of sync.

The debate began after a US high school student posted an audio clip on social network Reddit, which puzzled netizens about what they really heard. Some insisted they heard “Laurel” each time they listened to the clip, while many others said they heard “Yanny”.

The audio was also posted on China’s Twitterlike platform, Sina Weibo, and became a hot discussion among Chinese netizens. People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, released a related post on Friday morning on its Weibo account. By 6 pm, about 2,500 people had said they heard “Yanny”, and 1,200 said they heard “Laurel”.

Ellen DeGeneres, the host of a popular US television comedy talk show, said she heard “Laurel”, while New Age musician Yanni was in the “Yanny” camp.

The White House also joined in the viral debate. In a video that the White House

released on Thursday afternoon, senior adviser Ivanka Trump says, “So clearly Laurel.” But strategic-communications director Mercedes Schlapp says, “Yanny’s the winner, Laurel’s the loser.”

The scientific explanation centers more on the quality of the recording and the resonance of speech sounds.

“This is a relatively lowquality signal that is played over a variety of devices, and the sound was developed to be on a perceptual border,” said Todd Ricketts of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Hearing and Speech Sciences Department.

“For example, with a fullrange, higher-quality speaker, I clearly only hear ‘Laurel’, but over my computer speakers, I clearly only hear ‘Yanny’,” Ricketts said.

Alicia Spoor, president of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology, said the complicated answer has to do with “resonance of the speech sounds”.

“When you say the word “Yanny” and “Laurel,” the waveform looks very similar for the first band of energy resonance. However, there is a significant difference in the second and third resonances of the two words, which is how humans interpret the words,” she said.

Some speculated online that the age of the listener might determine what was heard, while others changed the pitch to alter results.

“Age can play a role, as well as expectations,” Spoor said, although she still heard “Laurel” when she changed the pitch.

For an analogy, she cited the different ways that people heard the lyrics from the 1969 song “Bad Moon Rising” by the US rock ’n’ roll band Creedence Clearwater Revival: “There’s a bad moon on the rise” (the correct lyrics) versus “there’s a bathroom on the right.”