Many singers have experienced this confusion: when listening to their own singing recordings, they feel that their voices sound a bit distorted. This phenomenon also occurs in ordinary people. Why does the voice on the recording tape sound different from the way they usually speak?
Most people believe that the reason for the distortion of their own voices lies in the recording equipment, perhaps due to the insufficient fidelity of the recording equipment. However, biologists believe that the key lies in the different channels of sound transmission in the two cases.
Air-conducted sound transmission channel: Sound is collected by the outer ear, enters the middle ear through the ear canal, and finally converts into nerve impulses in the inner ear to reach the brain. This is a channel through which sound enters our ear through air vibration. However, biologists believe that in addition to this well-known air-conducted channel, there is another little-known sound transmission channel in the human body, which is the channel through which the sound we make is transmitted to the auditory nerve through the skull. When people sing, what they hear is not a single-channel input, but a mixed sound input through the "air-conducted" and "skull-conducted" channels simultaneously.
Now it's clear that when playing their own voices with recording equipment, the sound is only transmitted through the "air-conducted" channel; while when they speak or sing normally, the sound is transmitted through the mixed path of the "two channels". Therefore, when you listen to your own voice through the recording, there will be a feeling of distortion.