Why are each of our voices different when our vocal folds basically have the same structure?

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Why are each of our voices different when our vocal folds basically have the same structure?

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

While others have done a good job explaining how the vocal folds are different in many ways, I would argue this is not the final answer! According to the same logic, all dogs and birds would have different barks/tweets, but at least to me most dogs (of the same breed ofc) sound basically the same.

So it’s the other way around: human voices are quite similar to one another when “objectively” studied, but we humans simply are excellent at picking up on the small differences. The human ear is most accurate near the frequency of human speech, even more accurate than that of e.g. dogs and other animals with “good hearing”. In addition to our anatomical ability, we learn from a young age to differentiate between the voices of different people: we all have a lot of practice at this. If I spent several years learning to recognize individual dogs, I would most likely manage it, but the start would be ruff.

So the reason our voices sound different is because we are incredibly good at listening to speech and trained in recognizing voices.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You kind of answered your own question within the question.

>our vocal folds basically have the same structure

Every person’s voice is **basically** the same. In the full spectrum of audible sounds, everyone’s voice sounds basically the same. We don’t have people who speak, and it sounds like a chainsaw, or others who speak and it sounds like radio static, everyone’s voice basically sounds like a human voice. The small differences in pitch and timbre of each person’s voice is a combination of the minute differences in size and shape of the vocal folds, throat, larynx, mouth, tongue and soft pallate, and other internal mechanisms we use to shape our voices. But the all sound basically the same.

Anonymous 0 Comments

1. Because the structure of our vocal folds aren’t *exactly* the same.
2. The shape of your throat, nasal passages, mouth, etc. also shape the sound of your voice.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Same reason everyone looks different when all our skeletons have basically the same structure.

It doesn’t take much variance to produce a notable difference when your brain has evolved specifically to tell the difference between humans.

Like how you can analyze very slight differences in skull features to identify unique human faces, your brain is very acutely aware of small variants in the typical human vocal range.

There’s both an inherent difference in the size, shape, and tension of vocal structures and learned differences in our language, mannerisms, and accents. Combined it makes us all fairly unique speakers.