Hearing Your Own Voice

You're not alone there, Tom. I can't stand my voice either.

To be fair, a lot of other people can't stand my voice either, ho ho

It's the same for me, I always think I sound about 12 years old. Drives me nuts.

My voice sounds so squeaky when it's not in my own head. Not a fan.

There's a thread on this. Anyway, my voice is so very effeminate, and deep, like Stephin Merrit I guess.

lifetime of bad sinuses have left me with a very nasal voice.

Good to know other people have this issue. Has anyone actually listened to enough self-recordings to be completely neutral on their own voice? I'd imagine if I was a recording artist or public speaker I'd be more ambivalent.

I do occasional voiceover work and am told all the time that I have a great voice, but I can't stand to listen to it!

I forget what a mish mash my accent is and don't like to be reminded - combination of lancashire + posh glasgow = people thinking I'm from the west country.... It also makes me realise that I have more in common with my mum and my sister than I like to think - intonation, phrases etc.

I always cringe when I hear my own voice: way too nasally and flat. Ugh.

My accent is way more Black Country than it is in my head.

I don't mind the sound of my speaking voice but I always realize that I pause a lot in awkward places and use a lot of "um, uh" filler words. It makes me sound a lot more nervous than I think I actually am.

people always tell me i have a nice voice but yes, like you all, i hate it.

its okay when i hear it, but if i hear it on a recording or something... ugh

Seriously, I sound like I speak with some ridiculous cadence where I rush through half a sentence, then pause way too long before finishing it in a mumble, all with no relationship to actual phrasing.

I used to think this aversion-bordering-on-disgust was all about the lack of resonance that you usually hear as you speak, but now I'm thinking about it in psychoanalytic terms.

i do not have a radio voice. i am comfortable with this.

yes, there is a thread(s) (sort of) on this and there were even sound clips!

i have come to like my voice on radio etc but only when i make sure that it doesn't go up at the end. which it does and whatever guys i am from the west coast and cdn leave me alone i am trying to fix it!

i really love being on the radio though

yeah, me too, but i imagine that even at my ripe old age i still sound like a college dj.

i do not have a radio voice. i am comfortable with this.

What was the old joke about having a face made for radio?

I am so disconnected from the sound of my own voice now. Whenever I hear myself on the radio, it's been processed and compressed so much that I don't even consider it me. It's really kind of weird, and I wonder if someone like Cameron Diaz thinks the same thing when she sees another airbrushed photograph of herself on the cover of US Weekly.

That said, guess who gets the coldest feet when recording vocals with the band?

(and then there's "Wolfman Jack with a headcold"

related to what Pleasant Plains writes, i find that you like the sound of your own voice much better if it is recorded through a good microphone. i once did an a/b test using a Shure SM58 (cheapo) and an AKG C1000 (cheap but better), and my voice sounded much much more like it "normally" did using the latter one.

There's an anti-smoking commercial that plays on the radio station featuring a cowboy singing a jingle through his tracheotomy voice amplifier, and I always think "How can that be an anti-smoking commercial when it sounds like THE GREATEST THING EVAH?"

http://www.cinescola.info/backstage.jpg

WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WAY I TALK? AM I DUMB OR SOMETHING?

I quite like my voice when I hear it on the radio, but I do get times when I become self-conscious when I'm talking and I think my voice sounds shrill and grating.

It's not enough to shut me up, though. Or make me speak more softly.

try looking in the mirror on acid

Even worse, hook a video camera up to the TV set, point it at yourself, and watch that.

PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE ONE WAY BUT ITS REALLY THE OTHER WAY

the scary thing is, you probably see yourself and hear yourself less than anyone else that knows you fairly well

now, in the case of identical twins, well, that's just frightening how well you know what you look like

There is a great bit of that in Hong Kong film The Eye.

I *hate* my own voice. I sound like a boy, and I have far more of an Inverness accent than I hear myself having.

(re. the looking at yourself thing: I have an image in my head of what I think I look like, and looking in a mirror/at photos never ceases to amaze me about how wrong I've got it)

My accent is somehow simulataneously more Worcester and more RP at the same time than I imagine it. Plus I can see why people say I mumble too much :P

i can switch effortlessly between standard midwestern american and RP so, yeah, i count myself lucky. looking oneself in the mirror when intoxicated is a dead cert downer, but when you've done it once you kind of learn to avoid repeating it.

I flat out like the sound of my own voice most of the time, but sometimes listening back to shit where my guard's down, like interview tapes and that, I get a bit creeped out by how ineffectual I sound.

It's not so bad though.

It's like when you see your mirror image in another mirror so that it's your face as other people see it. It just looks wrong, and you feel like everything you thought you knew about yourself has been a lie. It's a similar thing with your recorded voice, which you're used to hearing resonate through your various cranial cavities and very pointedly not coming out of something that isn't your face. Plus, there's always some level of distortion in the recording. But you're always going to scrutinize that shit way more than other people will. So you're not nearly as weird sounding/looking as you think you are.

That said: I look and sound like a total freak.

I cringe every time when I realize just how much I sound like my mother.

I dont mind the tone of my voice all that much, but my accent, god. I have a really Australian accent, unless I am conciously putting on my "work" voice. I'm all with the "yaaiirrr" and stuff, and my voice is fairly deep, I hate hearing myself talk/sing.

Also, hahah Jaq OTM I sound like my mother as well. If I'm back home and I answer my parents phone they assume its my mom without missing a beat.

Does anyone remember the Simpsons where Marge heard her own voice and was like, 'Is that how I actually talk?'

I realized a couple years a go everyone hated their own voice, so I got over it. Largely out of having to do closing announcements for a store evry night.

I still look 15, too, so sounding 15 is just part of the package.

Also, hahah Jaq OTM I sound like my mother as well. If I'm back home and I answer my parents phone they assume its my mom without missing a beat.

Me too.

Aye, and me. So not only do I sound like a boy, I sound like a 60 year old woman too. Marvellous.

I completely don't think I have my hometown accent though, but I really really do. I don't dislike it, I just don't hear myself having it and it surprises me that years of not being there hasn't knocked it out of me yet.

(I have what I think are a variety of different voices - work voice, sensible and authoritarion voice, sensitive and caring voice, gibbering drunk with mates voice etc - but having not heard them back to myself, I'm pretty convinced that they all sound the same and I'm just deluding myself into thinking I don't always sound like a neddy wee kid from Inverness who's been living in the West of Scotland for too long. Crossed with my mum.)

Agony = speaking to someone on the phone but there's a delayed echo so not only do you hear your own voice, but you're expected to have a proper adult conversation with a stranger at the same time.

Oh gah I hate that esp on overseas or VOIP phone calls. I have to speak to people in east timor and stuff for work and it really throws me when I hear a delayed echo of myself ew.

I havent lost/changed my accent since moving to melbourne, but Australians generally dont have regional accents, which has always fascinated me. I guess the country is too young. You get a word here and there that gives someone away - Perth people say "here" as "heyre" in this almost southern US way, I only noticed that recently speaking to a friend. Melburnians say "Mahlbourne" instead of "Melhburn" and I've picked that up.

How 'bout hearing yr own voice singing? Then it's not only the quality, but when you can hear yrself off-pitch, it adds a new dimension to "cringe".

Since I started singing a few years ago, I've learned to listen for and amplify the more interesting aspects of my voice. I mean, I can't be Barry White, but I have gone through my Jello Biafra and Peter Murphy "periods".

I do occasional voiceover work and am told all the time that I have a great voice, but I can't stand to listen to it!

Pretty much my own take.

I don't mind my voice on radio, but hate it on ansaphone. Poor quality recording equipment distorts (or so I like to tell myself).

Vocal distortions can be good! At least, I enjoy hiding behind FX.

I have grown not to mind my singing voice, but my speaking voice... ugh.

I sound like my mum. And my gran, kind of mashed together, but throatier and more upper-middle-aged-upper-middle-class sounding. people have told me it's "school-marm-ish". Ugh! I hate my accent, I hate the way it's neither English or American but some weird hybrid that sounds foreign to everyone. I think I should start watching Sesame Street, apparently that's the best way to get or keep a perfect American accent.

My voice sounds so squeaky when it's not in my own head. Not a fan.

Michael, you are insane. You have a lovely voice!

So when does this happen? At what age?

When you're a kid, you love that you have a casette recorder. You record yourself and your sister (or whoever) doing jokes, having a laff, and listening back to it later and laffing more.

When you are older, unless you now do that thing for a living, it's the complete antithesis of what you would enjoy doing.

When?

there is supposedly a british radio presenter who really enjoys hearing his own voice but now i can't remember who it is

many actors never see the movies they've made, because they can't stand the sight of themselves on screen

well, that would count as 'making a living' as cthe continuity of doing that, makes it less irritating.

making a living at having your voice recorded doesn't lessen the weirdness or uncomfortability of hearing the playback, at least as far as i can tell

I've been told by most people I know that I have a great voice for radio but I still can't bring myself to listen to recordings of my Resonance broadcasts. It feels somehow indecent.

Well, it reminds me of when my mother left me a message on my phone message machine, but came round to the house before I played it, and when I did she was all "WHO WAS THAT????" and I was "it's you" IT IS NOT!! I DON'T SOUND LIKE THAT!!!

because she thinks she's all queens english/received pronunciation, and what she heard was geordie fishwife. In fact, it's neither, but hey.

I am still trying to work out my singing voice. I've given up trying to do anything with my speaking voice.