Laurel Or Yanny: An Audiophile's Perspective

I'm sure most of you are aware of this by now:

Do you hear Laurel, or Yanny?

Apparently if you hear the word 'Yanny', you have younger ears because you can hear the high frequency tones. If you hear the word 'Laurel', then you are only hearing the lower frequency tones.

Videos like this always interests me as an audiophile, and this one is especially interesting because unlike what the others are saying, my take on this audio illusion is it's not about hearing loss.

It's audio cognition!

Here is a good video explaining how this audio illusion works. The gist is there are two words mixed (overlapped) into the same time period, the word 'Laurel' is in the lower frequencies while the word 'Yanny' is in the upper frequencies.

By equalising away the lower or upper frequencies, you should be able to hear one or the other.

As mentioned before, the theory what word you hear is a indication of your hearing. The reason why this video turned viral is because you can be playing this same track over and over again to a group of friends, and some will hear 'Laurel', some 'Yanny' and then some who seem to hear a mixture or two.

You can also be hearing one word now, and the other later! You may even hear both! And this is why this video has gone viral.

So how could that be? The answer is not frequency hearing loss, it's actually audio cognition. 

The proper term is Sensory Gating, from Wikipedia:

Sensory gating describes neurological processes of filtering out redundant or unnecessary stimuli in the brain from all possible environmental stimuli.^[1][2] Also referred to as gating or filtering, sensory gating prevents an overload of irrelevant information in the higher cortical centers of the brain. The pulvinar nuclei of the thalamus play a major role in attention, and filter out unnecessary information.^[3] Although sensory gating is largely automatic, it also occurs within the context of attentional processes. Though the term sensory gating has been used interchangeably with sensorimotor gating, the two are distinct constructs.^[4]

The cocktail party effect illustrates how the brain inhibits input from environmental stimuli, while still processing sensory input from the attended stimulus.^[5] The cocktail party effect demonstrates sensory gating in hearing, but the other senses also go through the same process protecting primary cortical areas from being overwhelmed.

This is akin to two people speaking to you at the same time, and you can only pick up one conversation and not the other. In other words, the brain hears what the brains wants to hear. What the brain doesn't want to hear, they're dismissed as noise. All this is done at the subconscious level and is totally involuntary and out of your control.

This illusion works well because the two words are short and they are stressed at the same location and at around the same time period. These conditions meant the brain is incapable of processing the information in full, so it is forced to drop one or the other.

Why is this important then? Some folks on the Internet claimed 'Blind Testing' as the gold standard, e.g. if it's not blind tested, it's not real.

Try this so called 'scientific' tool on this clip and see how you go. Does this model still apply? No. Blind testing simply do not work. The brain is a complicated muscle and this audio clip should hopefully be enough to convince you blind testing is nothing but a myth.

I repeat - Blind Testing is a hoax.

So what should you do then? I'm shouting the same old mantra I have been talking about all the time - music your way. Believe in yourself, and take your own sweet time when evaluating sound quality.

Allow your mind to adjust to every environment, be constantly self aware. For example, know when you're tired and when you're not.

This is important because any physiological change will influence your audio perception. In other words how your brain gates information is determined by many factors. Some examples include physiology, mood, time of day, emotion, experience, memory, before exercise, after exercise, etc.

This is why music music affects you differently under different conditions. This is key, and as an audiophile this is a skill you should adopt and develop. To use this viral clip as an example, do not force yourself into a camp - do not try to hear the word laurel or Yanny. Simply let the word come to you, and enjoy that moment. Focus on yourself, and not what people say.

You can listen to a piece of music over the course of several years and continue to gleam new and sometimes very different perspectives out of  it.

This is yet another nail in the coffin for the blind testing myth. How can you take another person's blind testing results when you know that what he is hearing is:

• Not always consistent in the short term
• Not consistent in the long term
• Not transferable to anybody but him/herself

Back to the video, for what it's worth, when I'm working on something complicated and I listened to this clip immediately I hear the word laurel.

When I rest my mind (e.g. take a short break, stroll, etc) and re-listen tot the clip, I will hear Yanny.

So far I am yet to hear both words at once though. Of course this is just me and it will be different for you, everybody is unique.

I'm still curious about a question though. Listen to this video again:

At the timestamp 0:19, which word did you hear (see picture below for reference)? Anybody heard the word Laurel?

I always hear the word 'Yanny' at this juncture, but apparently some still managed to hear Laurel? Please comment below.