Yanny or Laurel? Audio clip confuses the world
One audio clip posted online has left listeners scratching their heads. Photo: Getty
Three years ago, the internet melted down over the colour of a dress.
Now an audio file has friends, family members and office mates questioning one another’s hearing, and their own.
Is the robot voice saying “Yanny” or “Laurel”?
The clip picked up steam after a debate erupted on Reddit this week, and it has since been circulated widely on social media.
One Reddit user said: “I hear Laurel and everyone is a liar.”
“They are saying they hear ‘Yanny’ because they want attention,” a tweet read.
Others claimed they heard one word for a while, then the other — or even both simultaneously.
What do you think? Play the audio below
What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I
— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018
It didn’t take long for the auditory illusion to be referred to as “black magic”.
And more than one person online yearned for that simpler time in 2015, when no one could decide whether the mother of the bride wore white and gold or blue and black.
It was a social media frenzy in which internet trends and traffic on the topic spiked so high that Wikipedia itself now has a simple entry, “The dress.”
guys help me out, does this dress say yanny or laurel pic.twitter.com/Tl2lfZKYBS
— Alex Zalben (@azalben) May 15, 2018
Of course, in the grand tradition of internet reportage, we turned to a scientist to make this article legitimately newsworthy.
Dr Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, helpfully guessed on Tuesday afternoon that “the acoustic patterns for the utterance are midway between those for the two words”.
“The energy concentrations for Ya are similar to those for La,” she said. “N is similar to r; I is close to l.”
She cautioned, though, that more analysis would be required to sort out the discrepancy.
That did not stop online sleuths from trying to find the answer by manipulating the bass, pitch or volume.
Okay once I sped it up I was able to hear Yanny but all I could hear was Laurel before. pic.twitter.com/4LQR2tnBun
— millie ͛ (@milliekay28) May 16, 2018
Some speculated that the differences might be related to hearing loss or the age of the listener. It is known that some sounds are audible only to people under 25.
“If you turn the volume very low, there will be practically no bass and you will hear Yanny,” a Reddit user wrote confidently.
Yet making those adjustments did not change the word for some.
“I literally just turned all frequencies below 1khz to negative 70 decibels and I still hear ‘laurel,’” someone said on Reddit.
The musician Yanni, for his part, said his ears weren’t deceiving him.
I only hear Yanni 😉 hahaha https://t.co/WrMMVvl8iX
— Yanni (@Yanni) May 15, 2018
With time, a definitive scientific explanation will probably surface, like the one given for the dress, which had much to do with lighting.
Until then, baffle your friends and astound your enemies, until the next random internet phenomenon has you doubting your own senses.
Daniel Victor and Patrick LaForge contributed reporting.
– The New York Times
