I here laurel. What the heck is wrong with you guys. I listened to the audio clip 1000 times. No matter what I here LAUREL no arguments.
I hear Yanny, but then when I put it close to my ear, I hear both.
2
When I put it in the middle I hear yanny but then when I don't think about yanny I hear laurel. There shouldn't be a argument over this because it's both!! But shout out to any Jake Paulers out here!!! It's Everyday Bro!! Peace!!!✌✌
i hear yanny and laurel in the original sound. i just think of one of the words and i hear it. its weird because in the beginning i heard yanny then i started hearing laurel and then i was able to hear both.
Both
I can hear both by moving the slider one notch to the left. It alternates. Anymore and I only hear laurel. On the original recording I can only ever hear yanny. It's really freaky.
After a couple time i started to hear laurel even when listening to the original, but i originally heard yanny but i kinda hear yammy
Hi I love this tool you can hear yanny and laurel both amazing but in reality i think laurel
i can her both and im 11 this is just crazy!!!!!!!
Ok don’t put your age online
And ok.
1. It's really not that crazy.
2. What does your age have to do with it?
3. Don't put your age online!
This made it so I could hear both in the original lol
I hear only Yanny even when slider is all way on the left.
Laurel. No question for me. Even with slider pushed all the way to Yanny I heard Yalie.
The real answer is laurel but some people here yanny because it’s mixed together.
I hear both
I only hear Yanny when I first start. But then after when I move the arrow, it instantly changed into laurel. My brain is having listening problems
Woah! Thankyou! Now I can her both! Love y’all!
i hear both
Where do I click to submit if I hear a faint "Yanny" all the way on the left and a really low "Laurel" all the way on the right? ;-)
The problem with submitting when I first hear the word change is that it depends on the starting point. If I move the slider from "laurel" to when I hear "yanny," then I don't hear "yanny" until I'm near the far right of the slider. If I start at "yanny," then I don't hear "laurel" until I'm one line of demarcation from the center.
That said, I hear "laurel" on most of the slider ranges.
1
LUAREL!!!
Now I understand “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
laurel
I can control what I hear when I don't change it... weird.
1
What we hearin this example is the result of brain-based language processing, unless we suffer from loss of hearing. Language recognition develops during early childhood. Here is an informative review on the subject by eminent language psychologist Patricia Kuhl published in the journal Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1533?xid=PS_smithsonian
Far right = (almost) (P)eony, with an under-pronounced "p." 1 click left of center and I'm hearing both words, with "Laurel" dominating, but barely. 1 notch right of center and it's only "Yanny." I guess I'm closer to being a "Yanny" person? I figure out songs by ear, that is, I listen to melodies and words until understood and remembered. It never occurred to me that manipulating the bass and treble controls, during music playback, to something OTHER THAN a high-fidelity setting, might make it easier to hear some details.
Unless one wants to rest on one's laurels, I heard 'Yalie' and have yet to set foot on a college campus.
1
Very cool tool! After a few minutes of use, I was able to train my ear to cue in on the "Laurel" frequencies I didn't initially hear. Now when I listen to the original clip on loop, I alternate between hearing both sounds.
2
Well, when I started from the right, I heard YaMMy then gradually moving left, I heard Yanny, then 3/4 to the left, Laurel.
What I heard ultimately depended on whether I started to the left verses the right, I could hear Laural on the right and YaMMy on the left.
After a while I heard Laurel then YaMMy one after the other almost in concert.
I listened to the recording and heard "laurel" consistently, never changed. My husband heard on "lanny". Could this be part of the problem that women face in male dominated world? Men just don't "hear" what we are saying.
5
I am a man and I hear "laurel." My wife hears "yanny."
At the far end I no longer hear Laurel, but it sounds like Yarry not Yanny
It could be my bad hearing from a life of rock, roll, and power tools, maybe it was my time in the Army, but I keep hearing "G.I."
Anyone else getting this?
I can only hear Yanny no matter where I move the slider. What is wrong with my ears??
I never hear Yanny. At far right, it sounds like Yawwy, or yawie.
2
I hear Yanny.
Some people hear things in high tone which makes them to hear Yanny. And others hear laurel because they hear things in a lower tone.
Once you move the bar In the middle you can kind of hear both I have to turn my computer at an angle to hear laurel. But I heard yanny.
1
When I hear "Yanny" it is in a high-pitched, tinny voice, and when I hear "Laurel" it is in a low-pitched, masculine voice. I wonder if the ability to mentally switch between the two frequency sets is part of the human ability to focus on speech from individual speakers and tune out other voices.
2
Interesting. When I use this tool and adjust the slider on my laptop, then try it on my cellphone I get very different results: Laurel is the dominant on most settings on the laptop, Yanny on my phone. Which makes me think that the audio equipment being used plays a big factor.
9
I heard Laurel no matter where the slider was, but when I had it like three notches right-of-center, I could at least understand why someone would perceive Yanny. But hearing Yanny is always a chore for me. I have to really focus on it and be told to listen for it.
2
i heard them, but i also heard that so-called yowa demon noise since it was at the true middle point!!!!
I hear either one depending with the slider right in the middle.
Something more to the mix. I never heard yanny , I heard yarry like Larry.
3
I hear laurel overall, but moving the bar I could get to yanny. Interestingly, the more I played with the bar, the more I noticed bias toward the last thing I heard. That is, once I heard yanny I heard it more easily when I moved the bar toward laurel. The brain is a funny thing.
2
I hear Yanny
1
Maybe this is a trumped-up game to cause more confusion.
im just 10 years old and i know that it saying Laurel because when u put it on laurel it say laurel but when u put it on yanny it mixs both of there names toghter and it say lanny or sumthing like that but it mixes both of there names up and if u go lower it says laurel and high it say yanny but it rlly bot or just one and it well be laurel nd almost everybody said it was laurel so yah i not saying it cuz other ppl are but it is laurel byyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeejayla
1
if you think of yanny you will hear yanny and if you think of laurel you will hear laurel leave bar in the middle
On laptop speaker, clearly Laurel. On smart phone speaker, clearly Yanny.
In the middle I hear a clear Hilary. To the left, a clear Laurel. To the right, a badly pronounced Hilary. I never hear Yanny.
In the middle or left I hear "Laurel". Moving the slider right I hear "Yaylly", not "Yanni".
I guess my ears are broken!
Best,
--Keith
@KeithDPatch
1
For the life of me I can only hear "LAUREL." Maybe if I was dosed with LSD, eye-lids peeled back as "yanny" blasts over a megaphone, flashed across a screen; MAYBE then I'd hear it. But I doubt it. Ya'll crazy.
1
i hear both.
I find the "critical point" on the Laurel side to be fluid.
2
Might be the only time this year I get to believe Sarah Huckabee and Kellyanne Conway or Ivanka. So there is that.
1
Ok, weird, in more ways then one.
I hear Laurel with the slider in the 'default' middle.
I hear Laurel when I slide to the left and I hear Laurel when I slide to the right.
Then it becomes weird, only when I reach the absolute right, it becomes Yanny.
I gets even weirder when I begin sliding back to the middle from the absolute right. I suddenly hear Yanny all the way back to the middle.
When I reach the absolute middle, it returns to Laurel again.
If I move back to the right it stays Laurel again when it was Yanny just a few pixels ago and changes to Yanny when I reach the absolute right.
This is a mystery!
4
Cool tool. I suspected it had to do with the frequency response of whatever speakers I was using because on my phone, where the bass response is awful, I hear Yanny, whereas with my mastering headphones whose frequency response is up to 40k, I hear Laurel consistently.
At the far Yanni end of the scale I hear Yarri, not Yanni. Also, I have known hearing deficit.
1
Even when I turn the slider all the way down I don't hear Yanny. It sounds like he's saying "Gerry," but with a strong lisp. I'm trying to hear Yanny, but I it never sounds anything like it.
2
I slid the gauge all the way over to the left and I still hear Yanny, clear as day. What a linguistic mystery!
I believe the point at which you hear Laurel vs Yanni is dependent on how well you hear higher frequencies. I think this is also related to age. Younger people hear higher frequencies better than older people. I recall reading an article a few years ago that somebody published high frequency ring tones that were picked up by school students. The students would use these ring tones as text message alerts. The students could hear the ring tones, but the teachers couldn't.
2
From the middle to the right (towards Yanny), I clearly hear three syllbles. Yanny is only two. So is Laurel, and to the left (towards Laurel), I only hear two.
So where does the third syllable come from?
If I push the indicator to the line before the last towards "Yanni," I can hear "Laurel" as the main sound, and a weak "Yanni" in the background. Why is that? I can only hear "Yanni" at the very end of the line. But if I push the indicator back towards Laurel, then I can hear "Yanni" for a little longer. Weird! If I had a pair of kittens or puppys, I would call them "Yanni" and "Laurel."
On T.V. I almost only heard Laurel. On my laptop I only heard Laurel at the far left end. Seems to be a matter of speakers.
1
What the linear scale does not include are any third or additional words which might be heard by the listener. At approximately half way to the first mark on the Yanny side I clearly heard "Yaweh" not an either/or proposition as listed. I wonder if others heard the same thing.
I don't hear Yanny no matter how far I move the gauge in that direction. About 4/5 of the way to the right Laurel changes to Yerry for me, never to Yanny. I wonder if there's a clue to hearing problems in this that could lead to better hearing aids. I'm hard of hearing with loss in the high frequency. I hope the Times science section will follow up on this.
12
Strange. There seems to be a type of hysteresis. At the mid point, I heard Laurel. Switching to each end point, I heard Laurel and Yanny. But when I moved the selection from the midpoint to the Yanny side, I heard Laurel to about the 75% point. As I headed back to the center, I heard Yanny until I got just past the mid-point again.
I know that colors look different depending on the adjacent color, it looks like a similar thing is going on here.
14
I agree; I tried to a find a "mid point" -- somewheres in the 75% range -- where the word was indistinct or halfway between Laurel & Yanny and could not. It kept shifting. According to fairly recent audiology testing, my hearing is in tip top shape.
At first a I only heard Yanny but as I moved the slider towards Laurel and then back towards Yanny I found I could hear Laurel where I'd previously only heard Yanny. Now I hear both although I have to work a bit more for Laurel.
8
This is silly. Both words are present. What you hear is based on what you are listening for. At first I only heard Yanny until I slid the slider quite close to Laurel; now that I know what to listen for I can hear Laurel (if I choose) nearly all the way over to the Yanny side. There is no answer to "Yanny or Laurel?" It's both. Or whichever one you focus on.
2
This was what happened to me as well. I first heard Yanny, went to Laurel, and back to the center- and I finally heard both at the same time. Now, I can make my brain decide whether to hear Yanny, Laurel, or even both.
1
PREACH.^ I heard both Laurel and Yanny in the middle line. I think it has something to do with whatever word you're focusing on.
Nope, I have mostly heard Yanny, and consequently that's what I expect to hear, but a few times I've heard Laurel, plain as day!
I find that I can't find one point to submit, because there is a hysteresis -- once it becomes Yanny it stays Yanny moving back towards Laurel for longer than it took to change from Laurel to Yanny. . .
12
That was my experience too. So I could not really find a point where it changed, nor a point where the word was BETWEEN Yanny & Laurel. It kept shifting, whatever the cause.
I can’t make it stop! I pressed the pause button and it registered visually but it just keeps on repeating. Hiding the post also doesn’t work. Aaaaaaaggghhh!!!
3
The other thing that is wierd is that if I pick a mid point and let it stay there and play itself over and over, I hear a series of variations over the repetitions, all very plain, but then I can't make my mind go back to perceive an earlier variation--
for example
I heard yaouny then yah-o-nee, then yanny, then yammy, then yam - iny then yam-ity
well, wait, now i can make my perception switch among them
wait -- now it is saying laurel...
how do i know this isn't alexa taking over the world or something?
1
I hear yanny on every media TV channel and web site including this one (until the arrow is within half a space of laurel), but when I went to the dictionary.com web site, supposedly the original source, I clearly hear laurel.
When I entered "yanny" at dictionary.com, it asked "Did you mean yawny?"
Is it telling us something?
1
I bet that like the dress, this is as much about perception as it is about what device you're playing from. I can't hear the "yanny" at all from my headphones on my desktop computer, but on cellphone I can hear it sorta. I'm sure that on other people's phones it's all the way to "yanny".
It's kinda scary to think that as important as our own perception is, computers and their peripherals are adding just another layer of difference.
1
The visual perception of the color in the dress may depend on the genes that determine the mixture of the cones in the retina. By contrast, the perception of the sound in this example depends on the acoustic environment our brain develops in.
Moreover, the perception of the words can be modified depending on focal attention and active frequency filtering as so many commenters describe. Alas, we can't change the mixture of cones in our retina on the fly like that.
1
The dress photo was also affected by what device you saw it on -- phone or computer -- the lighting circumstances -- the internal settings of the device (brighter or dimmer or higher chroma key) -- and the lighting in the room (or outdoors) where you viewed that image on that device. On top of that, your own eyes. Everyone sees things a little differently, with the extreme being those who are literally red/green color blind.
I love you, New York Times
11
Now I understand Trump supporters!!
14
How?
When the slider is in the middle I can hear both "Laurel" and "Yanny" superimposed on each other.
3
I'm the same. I barely moved the slider towards yanny and heard it immediately and now I hear both (I didn't hear yanny from the start, but now I can't go back to hearing just one).
I'm hearing "yammy" not "yanny" when I get about 3/4 through, but it seems once you hear it, you can backtrack and hear it where you previously heard "laurel."
1
In the original clip I heard 'Yarri'. But once I played with this web page it became 'Laurel'. The point of the shift changed permanently to the right for me.
1
i can hear laurel on the yanny side and vice versa
2
No matter where I put the slider, it made my dog bark.
8
I clearly hear Laurel. Just before the mid-way level, I hear both. As I move the slider to the right (toward Yanni) I hear what sounds like Yaddi.
I'm so confused! I've listened to the clip elsewhere and it's always been Yanny. Which made sense because I've always joked that I have the hearing of a dog, but the eyesight of a mouse. Then I heard it on PBS NewsHour earlier tonight and out of the blue I heard Laurel plain as day. So I figured it must have something to do with the television audio that accentuates the bass. But then I caught a rebroadcast of the same show later tonight, and it was back to Yanny! Does eating dinner affect one's hearing? Lol.
I definitely hear Laurel. If I slide slowly and incrementally to the right, I keep hearing Laurel all the way to the end. However, if I jump immediately to the right extreme, yes, it's loudly and clearly Yanny.
We don't realize that what define the sounds out of our mouths - vowels and consonants - are not pure frequencies but combinations of frequencies, with formants, overtones, undertones, etc. But who would have thought that if you chopped off the bottom frequencies of Laurel, you're left with Yanni? I mean, the words don't look anything alike. :)
Welcome to the world of psycho-acoustics. This way madness lies.
5
I get different switch points every time I try it. It's bistable, like the Necker cube.
1
Thank you NYT for building this !!! I saw this on TV and I could only hear Laurel. I so wanted to hear Yanny, now I can. Thanks again!
1
I initially heard Laurel all the way over to the last spot on the right before the very edge - but then kept hearing Yanny as I backed it left. Then once I heard Laurel again, I kept hearing it as it went right. Finally, I found a zone between the first and second points right of center where it would switch between Laurel and Yanny without moving the slider at all. Very strange.
6
When I started in the middle, and moved to the right, I heard Laurel for almost the whole time. But when I moved from right to left, I couldn't hear Laurel, even in the places where I had heard it moments earlier! I started hearing Gary, and once I heard Gary, that's all I heard. What a fascinating experiment in the unreliability of our senses.
3
Lots of hysteresis here, so you can't really pick *a* spot where it changes.
11
I, too, saw the hysteresis. At first, I heard "yanny" with the slider centered. I had to move it to about 1 1/2 tics from the left end before "laurel" came clear. "Laurel" persisted as I slid rightward past the center. After moving back and forth, I finally settled on a half-tic left of center as the crossover.
I came back an hour or two later and got drastically different results. My initial neutral point was slightly left of center; and it changed to far to the right of center.
1
Drat. I can't hear either ... although when I go to the vocabulary.com page for "laurel" I do hear "laurel."
At first all I heard was Yanny, all the way to the left slider of Laurel. But at the very bottom I heard Laurel (after a Yanny or two), and now I can switch between Yanny / Laurel, all along the slider! (Even all the way up on Yanny side)
I hear “Paul is dead”.
37
This is really messing with my head. Keeping it in the middle, at first I hear yanny. However the more I listen to it it starts to sound like laurel... This is hands down the strangest thing I have ever experienced.
3
Sounds gold to me. My duaghter only hears blue though.
11
It's seems that a lot of people are experiencing something called hysteresis, which shows up in a bunch of state dependent systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis
In this example, there is no fixed dividing point between Laurel and Yanny. The crossover point is "history dependent". If you are on the laurel side and move to the yanny side, the switching point between the two perceptions occurs closer to the yanny side than where the switching point occurs if you start on the yanny side and move to the laurel side. The switching point is also influenced by the speed at which you move from left to right or right to left.
Intriguing. But pretty frivolous unless you are doing research on auditory perception.
19
I'd call it "experience-dependent." How our auditory system processes sound - and identifies words - depends on what we get to hear in the first years of life. The switching point may very much depend on that.
1
Yes - I was hoping someone had remarked on the hysteresis. Interesting.
What struck me as odd about the player was that when I started at the center and moved left, I did hear 'laurel' at increasing volume until I reached the far left BUT if I started at the far right and just slid left I kept hearing 'yeahny' over and over. Tried from center again and it was 'yeahny from end to end.
2
I can hear both! I have to filter out the higher or lower frequencies in my head
It clearly sounds like 'Yanni' to me. Perhaps what we hear depends on what language or English accent we grew up with.
1
in just the right spot it sounds to me like "Laurie" or "Lori" Even all the way on the Yanni side, it sounds to me more like "Yammi"
1
I hear "Laurel" until I slide down to about the 83% mark toward "Yanny." Right around 81, they start to blend.
And no, I don't think this debate is a frivolous distraction like the dress color debate of 2015. Perception is everything, isn't it?
5
Maybe this is why-when I hear Trump speak-I hear a selfish money-grubbing idiot.
Others hear a stable genius that truly cares about them.
3
If I put the slider at the spot where I can here both Laurel and Yanni, and then just push it back a tad towards Laurel, I can get it to say "Jelly".
2
I heard Yanny clear as day then as I slid down to the Laurel end I heard Laurel and haven't been able to hear Yanny again. Slide it down to Yanny and it sounds more like a combination of gary and jerry but not Yanny at all. Went to the vocabalury.com site and heard nothing but laurel there as well.
3
Same here. New York Times, what have you done?
4
I heard this on NPR while driving 70 on a highway, and I heard neither laural or yanny. I hear yarry (rhymes with hairy). Here, at one-half notch to the right, that's what I hear: yarry. Clear as day.
I find it a very interesting phenomenon. Thanks NYT!
If you slide the slider back and forth quickly, it produces an odd effect...
I hear laurel loud and clear. moving the slider left I hear jerry on the last two increments.
2
I heard 'yanny" from 50% all the way right to 90%, and then "laurel" all the way back left to 10%; and then back and forth till there was a distinct dividing line at 53%.
Wow, that was weird. "Yanny" clear as day until I moved the slider half the way to the right, and then it was "Laurel" clear as day. As someone else noted, it stays as "Laurel" even as I slide back away from the point where it first 'flipped' from one word to another. Then, as it moves closer to the center "Yanny" returns.
So, what is going on in my ears and/or brain? Why do different people *very* clearly hear one word or the other? And why the suddenness of the transition? This science nerd wants to know! (And then I'll get back to looking at dandelions under my digital microscope.)
1
The decision between hearing "Yanni" and "Laurel" is the result of the interaction between different parts of auditory cortex. Top-down nerve cell connections from higher order cortical areas that integrate a wide range of auditory information terminate on nerve cells in lower order areas that process narrow range bottom-up auditory input from the inner ear, modulating the input to give preference for either one or the other perception.
Vowels and consonants are combinations of frequencies. We don't realize this or consciously process this. When audio distortion, or differential audio perception by different people, changes the balance of these frequencies, the vowels and consonants that are heard is changed. It's like if you change the proportions of ingredients in a cocktail, sauce, or perfume, the overall perception of the combination as a whole can change radically. With food and drink, you might still make a connection between one recipe and another, because you possibly have experienced the ingredients separately. However, with basic auditory sounds, no one has ever separately analyzed in their own ears the different formants, overtones, and undertones.
At the center spot I hear both which is very disturbing. The slightest movement either direction makes it Laurel until I pretty far to the left then I get Yanny.
This is both intriguing and disconcerting. I've only ever heard "yanny," and continued to hear that when I first pressed play on this tool, but after going all the way to the right to "laurel" only now hear laurel! Will my brain switch back...? How strange. Looking forward to the scientific explanation on this amusing diversion.
8
I was in the same boat as you a few minutes ago. All I ever heard was "Yanny" and scoffed at anyone claiming to hear Laurel. Now, after going to the very left and back to center on this tool, I only heard Laurel. There is a way to make yourself hear Yanny again. Go to the very right. Now, while you hear Yanny, slowly move the slider back to the center - a small nudge at a time. You should be able to continue hearing Yanny when you reach the middle. Try it a few times if it doesn't work the first time.
Also, there is a very nice short Youtube video giving more science behind this madness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ
The sound you hear depends on many factors including age apparently. Different frequencies in the audio clip sound like different words, and this works especially because the two words are very similar audio profiles.
Americans are obsessed with Laurel or Yanny on social media? Meanwhile, Putin's deadly serious Russia is busying itself on social media dissolving our democracy from the inside out. Now, what do hear? Laurel or Hardy?
1
I'm tempted to agree with you but I'm equally tempted to disagree. If I take a step back for a second, maybe move a little over, I start to hear this story as equally relevant to those about Putin and/or other authoritarians in the world today.
3
We can be obsessed with chewing gum and obsessed with walking at the same time.
5
I hear Debbie Downer, loud and clear.
5
I think one of the more interesting data you could get from this is where any given individual's transition point is and what that might mean physiologically
3
This is too weird. I can even find a spot on the slider where I can hear both words simultaneously (!). The creepy feeling I get is similar to the one I got upon encountering the McGurk effect, in which watching someone's lips completely changes one's perception sound they are making: (!)
https://youtu.be/G-lN8vWm3m0
It makes you wonder what the world really looks and sounds like, and if the word "really" has any meaning. It's like perceptual quantum mechanics.
22
Stranger still, in my comment I wrote that it "...changes one's perception of the sound they are making", but the words "of the" appear not to be there(!).
2
This illustrates the unreliable nature of human perception.
Defense attorneys, take note!