FNYT
An 18-year-old high school student in Lawrenceville, Ga., Roland Szabo, was the first to post it on Reddit, where it quickly took off. At first, he claimed he had made the audio file himself. But on Thursday Mr. Szabo credited the students identified by Wired as creators of the Instagram post, saying he had been caught up in the media excitement.
Social media bragging rights aside, the source of the clip may frustrate some and vindicate others: the vocabulary.com page for “laurel,” the word for a wreath worn on the head, “usually a symbol of victory.” Sorry, Team Yanny.
Many audio and hearing experts have weighed in.
Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, helpfully guessed 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.”
Patricia Keating, a linguistics professor and the director of the phonetics lab at U.C.L.A., said: “It depends on what part (what frequency range) of the signal you attend to.”
“I have no idea why some listeners attend more to the lower frequency range while others attend more to the higher frequency range,” she added. “Age? How much time they spend talking on the phone?”
Elliot Freeman, a perception researcher at City University of London, said our brains can selectively tune into different frequency bands once we know what to listen out for, “like a radio.”
“What one hears first depends on the how the sound is reproduced, e.g. on an iPhone speaker or headphones, and on an individual’s own ‘ear print’ which might determine their sensitivity to different frequencies,” he said.
While the experts theorized, online sleuths were hard at work manipulating the bass, pitch or volume.
Social media bragging rights aside, the source of the clip may frustrate some and vindicate others: the vocabulary.com page for “laurel,” the word for a wreath worn on the head, “usually a symbol of victory.” Sorry, Team Yanny.
Many audio and hearing experts have weighed in.
Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, helpfully guessed 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.”
Patricia Keating, a linguistics professor and the director of the phonetics lab at U.C.L.A., said: “It depends on what part (what frequency range) of the signal you attend to.”
“I have no idea why some listeners attend more to the lower frequency range while others attend more to the higher frequency range,” she added. “Age? How much time they spend talking on the phone?”
Elliot Freeman, a perception researcher at City University of London, said our brains can selectively tune into different frequency bands once we know what to listen out for, “like a radio.”
“What one hears first depends on the how the sound is reproduced, e.g. on an iPhone speaker or headphones, and on an individual’s own ‘ear print’ which might determine their sensitivity to different frequencies,” he said.
While the experts theorized, online sleuths were hard at work manipulating the bass, pitch or volume.
This is kind of and interesting take on how people can hear the same thing and perceive it different ways. I think everyone in the PRSI knows what I'm talking about.
