When you hear your own voice, can sound carried through bone outweigh sound carried through air?

Details

You hear your own voice through sound traveling through air and vibrations carried through bone. Researchers compared these pathways while people produced speech sounds. They designed a large earmuff to reduce airborne sound while minimizing the sound changes that occur when the ear is covered. Measurements taken during speaking with the earmuff were used to estimate the bone-conducted component; measurements at the entrance of an open ear canal were used to derive the air-conducted component.

The researchers compared the components relative to the sound levels at which each pathway became audible. For most of the ten speech sounds tested, the bone-conducted component dominated between 1 and 2 kHz. Results varied slightly with how the sounds were produced, while sounds produced in comparable ways showed similarities.

This is a finding about particular frequencies and speech sounds, not a claim that bone conduction always dominates how we hear ourselves. The abstract notes that hearing aids affect the two pathways differently, making their balance relevant to how wearers hear their own voice. It does not report a hearing-aid trial or a comparison with recorded voice playback.