News

Yanny or Laurel?

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 16th, 2018 · 11:12 AM EDT

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Ok, I’ll bite.

The internet is up in arms today over a four second audio clip that apparently results in some listeners hearing the word “yanny” and some hearing “laurel.”

BWanks and I hear yanny, but Coggin and Investor Jeff hear laurel:

What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I

— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018

This is kind of like the “what color is the dress?” thing from a few years ago. Some people thought the dress was black and blue and others thought it was white and gold. I’m partially colorblind, so I didn’t see shit. Looked brown to me.

Anyway, the New York Times tried to get an expert to explain this thing:

Dr. Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, helpfully guessed on Tuesday afternoon that “the acoustic patterns for the utterance are midway between those for the two words.”

“The energy concentrations for Ya are similar to those for La,” she said. “N is similar to r; I is close to l.”

She cautioned, though, that more analysis would be required to sort out the discrepancy.

Seems like a bass/frequency thing, but I don’t know.

Of course, everyone is having a fun with this jawn and just replacing the clip with something entirely different.

Shout to BGN radio:

We hear something completely different other than Yanny or Laurel gang pic.twitter.com/mR6amd6e8x

— Go Birds (@GoBirdsPod) May 16, 2018

Shout out to tiger:

Do you hear #Laurel or #Yanny because all I hear is an EDM BANGER pic.twitter.com/ehebnE8KL7

— tiger justice⚡ (@tigerjustice97) May 16, 2018

Shout out to SungWon Cho (ProZD):

yanny or laurel pic.twitter.com/1PfV90qy03

— SungWon Cho (@ProZD) May 16, 2018

Shout out to Isaac:

https://twitter.com/WorldofIsaac/status/996730513867116545

And shout out to MoadM:

https://twitter.com/FCBARCA098/status/996735955351625730

Time’s yours.