Why You Hear Yanny and Not Laurel Explained

Ah ha! It is both words over each other with Yanny in high frequency... 

What do you hear?


So if you listened to too much rock music or with you iPod too loud and damaged your ability to hear high frequency, you hear the second word, Laurel. 
I hear Yanny even though I'm somewhat old because I've been VERY careful over the years to protect my hearing since I enjoy music so much.... I don't go to concerts, Warriors basketball games (very loud) or shoot guns without ear plugs for a few examples... 

You can run the clip through a low pass filter and we should all hear Laurel if this is true.

Or turn down the treble on your PC and see if you hear Laurel if you year Yanny.

From  Do you hear what I hear? Yanny vs Laurel

I went to Northeast Hearing & Speech to chat with audiologists Jamie Healy and Hannah Millstine about how two people could listen to the same audio but hear two very different things. 

"There's a little high frequency difference between the two so if you have maybe better hearing for high frequencies you would probably tend to hear Yanni where if you had high frequency loss, mild or moderate, you may hear Laurel" said Healy. 

Millstine added, "There was some proof out there that Laurel is the original word, the original recording is Laurel and there is a high frequency overlay that got put on to make Yanni. Basically you are listening to two words being said at once."

UPDATE 5/16/18 at 5:01PM PST: What is really odd is I heard Yanny every time until I went to vocabulary.com to click the speaker to hear how to pronounce "laurel" and I heard "laurel" not "Yanny." 

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel

So, then I came back here and played the same clip and hear Laurel rather than Yanny! 

What changed in my brain's sound processor since I posted this article?

If you heard Yanny like I did and then play the Laurel clip at vocabulary.com does that also retrain your ear to hear Laurel?

Even odder, I reloaded this page and played the clip again and heard Yanny.... so I opened the Laurel clip at vocabulary.com on my second monitor, played the laurel clip three times then played this clip again and I was back to hearing laurel!

I wonder if I come back tomorrow and listen again if I'll hear Yanny or Laurel.....

UPDATE 5/16/18 at 5:21PM PST: When I play Kristen Sze's Channel 7 News clip (at 4:24PM PST on my DVR) of her playing her phone to others through my audiophile quality home HiFi with a $2,000 Marantz receiver driving an external audophile power amp to power expensive speakers plus a Velodyne subwoofer with its own amp running off the receiver, all I heard was Yanny on the home theater... until I played it back and forth with the dictionary.com laurel clip on my low quality $70 computer speakers ... then sometimes I hear Laurel and sometimes Yanny!

SO STRANGE!

Now I'm tempted to Chromecast the clip from my phone to my Home theater and see if it stays at Yanni.... or not and get ready to watch the Warriors beat Houston!