Almost nobody likes their voice when they hear it on a recording. The sound is weaker, shriller, more obnoxious than we’d like—an unbearable parody of something deeply personal. All our lives we’ve heard our voice as it resonates while speaking. And now we’re confronted with incontrovertible evidence that everyone we’ve ever spoken to has been hearing something so much… worse!

What accounts for the difference? Dr. Tyler Perrachione, of Boston University’s Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, has some insight. “When we hear our own voice, the sound reaches our ears both through the air around us and through our own head,” he says. “Because the head is denser than air, it emphasizes the low frequencies in sound, so we get used to hearing our voice soundi...