Yanny or Laurel? This audio clip is a new auditory illusion that is ready to break the internet

Remember back in 2015 when the internet was mind blown by this dress which was black blue for some and white gold for the others? A similar confusion is back, but this time people are trying to decide whether this viral audio file says Laurel or Yanny.

When you read the two words they do sound very far from each other, and make it hard to believe that one could sound like the other. And that’s exactly what’s freaking people out.

This audio file first picked up steam when a debate broke on Reddit, and the same has now made its way to social media.

Now I hear Yanny here, and for me it is impossible to imagine how it could sound like Laurel to anyone else. Let us know in comments below what you hear.

Interestingly, there are some users on the internet who claim that they heard one word for a while, and then eventually started to hear the other one.

On the other hand, a Twitter user found that you can actually hear both the words if you adjust the bass level of the clip.

Personally, I am hearing Laurel in the above tweet. Good god this is mind wrecking!

And the wonder that the Internet is, someone found that by pitch shifting the audio clip you can hear a bunch of different sounds.

But then…

Fortunately there  are voice investigation scientists, and we have a little perspective as to why this confusion is happening in the first place. The  New York Times quotes Dr Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, saying 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.” Hence, the muddle.