Publications
Partners
Marriages have been broken up over this. Relationships have been torn apart and working relationships have never been the same.
Okay, okay, we may be indulging in a wee bit of melodrama here, but when it comes to things like optical illusion, and now, the Yanny vs Laurel audio clip which is taking the internet by storm, can you really blame us?
I’m blaming this all on THAT DRESS. Remember back in 2015 when the internet broke into hives over a dress that people couldn’t decide was either White and Gold or Blue and Black?
It’s this all over again, except in audio form.
Just in case you may have been away from the internet for a while, an audio clip has been doing the rounds asking readers to determine whether the sound they’re hearing is either “Yanny” or “Laurel.”
It soon devolved into a heated debate where people were vehemently taking sides. W24 decided to jump in on the action both yesterday and this morning.
Turns out that out of everyone in our team, Carmen was the only one who heard Laurel. Marisa, Lebo, Zanele and myself all heard Yanny.
As did a good portion of our readers as indicated below (visit our page and feel free to join in the debate):
Turns out that 75% of our readers all hear Yanny.
I’m devastated to say that all of us are wrong (just kidding, my ed, Zanele, myself and Marisa, our fashion ed still insist we’re right) and that according to Bustle, the reason why we’re all fighting over this audio clip is because of the audio’s low recording quality.
Apparently if you listen to it when it’s adjusted to different pitches, it influences the sound – we’ve checked it out on Channel24 – turns out that with different adjustment levels, even I, a fervent Yanny sider, could actually hear Laurel. *Grumbles*
A university professor also revealed to The New York Times that it has a lot to do with how the acoustics present. To add to that, Patricia Keating, a linquistics expert also said that while she has no idea why, some people are just inclined to lean more towards higher frequency ranges while others can more easily pick out lower ranges.
So perhaps that could be at the heart of it.
It’s interesting to note that it is supposed to differ when it comes to listening via desktop or via phone, but when I tried on my mobile, I still heard Yanny, which definitely cements the idea that my ears are more tuned to certain frequency levels.
But that’s just us. Tell us what you heard in the poll below:
Sign up to W24’s newsletters so you don't miss out on any of our hot stories and giveaways.
