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the latest distraction: "yanni versus laurel"

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do you hear "yanni" or "laurel" or something else?
I hear YANNI! :bounce: 21%  21%  [ 7 ]
I hear LAUREL! :wall: 41%  41%  [ 14 ]
I hear "yelli" :scratch: 12%  12%  [ 4 ]
I hear something else. :dj: 9%  9%  [ 3 ]
I dunno what I hear :shrug: 3%  3%  [ 1 ]
where's my ice cream? :chef: 15%  15%  [ 5 ]
Total votes : 34

naturalplastic
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17 May 2018, 10:46 pm

Interesting.

So basically the audio itself is a contrivance created by two other pieces of audio laid on top of each other, of two different voices.



auntblabby
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17 May 2018, 11:50 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Interesting. So basically the audio itself is a contrivance created by two other pieces of audio laid on top of each other, of two different voices.

but in a heretofore clever way, with a degree of spectral sophistication not seen before. before spectral editing came along, this would have been somewhat harder to do and nowhere near as intuitive a process.



Trogluddite
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18 May 2018, 5:49 am

^ From the further comments in that LanguageLog article I linked to, it seems that whoever did it has a good understanding of how our brains process speech too - like they've chosen phonemes (speech sounds) that will mask each other in a particularly ambiguous way. If you just picked at random, I think there'd be a much greater chance of the subterfuge being more obvious.


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auntblabby
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18 May 2018, 1:42 pm

in any case, I think this distraction has legs, it's durable as it reaches with its manipulative tentacles so far into our psyches.



auntblabby
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18 May 2018, 1:47 pm

IMHO this is a diabolical distraction. :twisted: based on the results of the poll, I am guessing the majority of the respondents [if limited to the top two choices] are male and/or older.



naturalplastic
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18 May 2018, 6:34 pm

auntblabby wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Interesting. So basically the audio itself is a contrivance created by two other pieces of audio laid on top of each other, of two different voices.

but in a heretofore clever way, with a degree of spectral sophistication not seen before. before spectral editing came along, this would have been somewhat harder to do and nowhere near as intuitive a process.


Yeah.

Though in the 20th century you could have done something like that with non computer analog equipment (three reel to reel tape recorders, an equalizer, and a mixer). Don't know why they use "laurel and yanni". It would be more meaningful if they had used "laurel and hardy" IMHO. Lol!

But anyway you could record one voice saying "Hardy" and then record another voice saying "laurel".

Then you could run both through separate analog equalizers. The first with low frequencies potted to zero, and the mid to high frequencies potted up. And the second with the equalizers set the opposite way.

And then you take your two resulting pieces of audio and played them on separate reel to reels (or cassettes, or whatever) back through a mixer onto to a third reel to reel. And you would have more or less the same thing: two superimposed pieces of audio in the same mix: one with the low frequencies cut out, and the other with the high frequencies cut out.

Both the Laurel and Yanni things could have been spoken by the same (probably male baritone) person. When the "Yanni" is culled out by that engineer its sounds like a woman speaking in a breathy soprano, while the Laurel sounds like an assertive baritone. But the Yanni is probably just the faint upper harmonics of the same person's voice, with the main sound of their voice notched out.The Laurel is the opposite: just the main voice with out the upper harmonics.



auntblabby
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18 May 2018, 7:35 pm

I wonder why nobody thought of it before now?



auntblabby
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19 May 2018, 12:01 am

I think the Russians are behind this mess.



SabbraCadabra
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19 May 2018, 12:35 am

I voted for "Yanni" and "something else". What I hear sounds more like "chewie" but with the Y instead of the CH. So kind of like "yewwie".

I've heard it on the radio in my car, and on my computer, and it's always yewwie. Except when they pitch it down a bit, then I finally hear laurel.


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auntblabby
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19 May 2018, 1:08 am

SabbraCadabra wrote:
I voted for "Yanni" and "something else". What I hear sounds more like "chewie" but with the Y instead of the CH. So kind of like "yewwie". I've heard it on the radio in my car, and on my computer, and it's always yewwie. Except when they pitch it down a bit, then I finally hear laurel.

have you tried listening to the up-pitched one?



auntblabby
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19 May 2018, 9:49 pm

4 days and it's still a thing. but I give it about 2 more weeks at the most.



SabbraCadabra
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19 May 2018, 11:40 pm

auntblabby wrote:
have you tried listening to the up-pitched one?

I think so, it still sounded like "yewwie".


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auntblabby
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19 May 2018, 11:47 pm

SabbraCadabra wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
have you tried listening to the up-pitched one?

I think so, it still sounded like "yewwie".


well if you look in one of the scientific videos, on the spectrogram you can clearly see the "yanni" portion on the top half of the spectrogram, so it makes sense that upping the pitch would make "yewwie" even more audible, and lowering the pitch would make "laurel" easier to hear.



SabbraCadabra
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20 May 2018, 4:09 am

I hadn't watched any of the videos, but I assumed that's what was going on.


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auntblabby
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20 May 2018, 5:11 am

^^^that's very intuitive of you :study:



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21 May 2018, 11:11 am

I only ever hear "laurel" at the normal pitch. I can't make myself hear "yanni" no matter what. When the pitch is lowered I only hear "yanni". This is spooky.