Your Voice Sounds Weird on Tape for Physical and Psychological Reasons

Don't like the way your voice sounds on recording but not in your head? It's not just you. Voice confrontation is a phenomenon that alters the way your own voice sounds in comparison to the voices of everyone else you hear. It is caused in part by the way your skull vibrates. Because of the way bones transmit sound to your ear, it will sound deeper in your skull. But more is going on!

The loathing of one's own voice has psychological roots, according to 1960s research. These "extra-linguistic indicators," such as how stressed you sound or whether you appear undecided or angry, are difficult to detect when you're speaking, but they become more obvious when you listen to a recording. In essence, it's things that came out somehow that you weren't conscious of or weren't attempting to project through speech, and now when you're confronted with them, they make you uncomfortable.