Feb 18, 2009

Crippled Mechanisms

Ever wondered why people speak louder with headphones on ? Even i am wondering. But what's written below might sound totally absurd. So please help me figure out what it is !

What happens when your headphones are on ? Have you observed that we speak louder or lower when headphones are on ? and even if someone tells us to correct it, we don't know how much to correct ..

When we speak, is the loudness factor pre-judged subconsciously or is it based on the feedback when you hear yourself? May be the judging mechanism uses some pre-fed data as to how loud it should be according to the environment.

For ex: When in office, you tend to speak low, but you don' take a moment off to decide how low it should be. You know it already, its fed. At max, you iterate a few times. Similarly, when you are in a crowdy place, you speak louder to communicate, you don't decide. Although you might need some trials to settle upon a frequency ..

Now, with headphones, you are louder the moment you start speaking ! .. you don't know which frequency to start with. The vocal frequency - environment feedback relationship is definitely not dynamic

You were loud because you were fooled by the music. You sub-consciously took a decision that the environment is noisy ..
But, the problem is that iterations won't work here either because you are not in the same environment as the person you are talking to is !! you have to plug out your headphones and then talk ..

Many body organs are trained and tuned by us through experiments, trial and errors. For example, the movement of tongue. But every training is on the basis of a feedback .. triviality .. ain't it ?

So if we don't get to hear ourselves, we will never be able to set a proper frequency judgement ability. May be that's why people with hearing disorders tend to speak out in the same pitch most of the times ..

So,
You never know how loud you are going to be unless you hear yourself out? ..

7 Comments:

Red said...

Quite an abstract entry as a first blog !!

avsc said...

interesting :) I m thinking why do I speak loud even without earphones :P

ankush said...

hahaha...explain narbhakshi's query :P

Vinay Sharma said...

ya .. actually he never considers the environment ..
he just speaks and then environment has a choice to adjust :D ...

Vaib's said...

Pehla blog 4 comments.
wo bhi itna abstract kahin se churaya toh nahin hai? :P

Vinay Sharma said...

i take it as a compliment :P

Sourabh said...

We have a new blogger in blagsphere.

You just described here what i already know.. :P

Not bad for first blog.