I sound different when voice recording

[FriendlyShadow]

Well, usually I used to think when I speak, I thought people were hearing exactly how I heard my voice. Now, whenever i talk through a mic or voice record my voice, I sound like a 12 year old monotonous boy. I know my voice doesn't sound girly when I hear myself talk, but it just sound way different when it's been recorded. It's really embarrassing. Why is this? Is that how people hear me talk, or do they hear how I'm hearing myself?

 

[WeirdyMcGee]

haha

People sound different to themselves than they do to everyone else-- and different in recordings or over the telephone as well.
The more you listen to yourself over a recording-- the more similar it will sound to what you hear when you speak out loud.

I still don't quite hear myself when I listen back to recordings of my voice and I've been hearing myself for...ohh... a good 11 years, now?

 

[Phoenixx]

Yeah, what we hear when we talk and what other people hear, there's usually quite a difference. When I first did a recording of my voice, I sounded a lot girlier than I thought I did. When I hear myself speak, I hear nothing but a deep voice, maybe a little monotone, but not girly at all. It's weird to listen back to my voice, I don't even recognize it.

 

[Aletheia]

When you speak, sound energy spreads in the air around you and reaches your cochlea through your external ear by air conduction. Sound also travels from your vocal cords and other structures directly to the cochlea, but the mechanical properties of your head enhance its deeper, lower-frequency vibrations. The voice you hear when you speak is the combination of sound carried along both paths. When you listen to a recording of yourself speaking, the bone-conducted pathway that you consider part of your “normal” voice is eliminated, and you hear only the air-conducted component in unfamiliar isolation. You can experience the reverse effect by putting in earplugs so you hear only bone-conducted vibrations.

(Timothy E. Hullar, "Why does my voice sound so different when it is recorded and played back?")