People are familiar with how they sound from the inside of their skull, but seem to shy away from listening to their own voice as heard on tape. (I certainly do.)

The difference might be a simple transformation, and this idea banks on that much of it is generic and doesn't differ that much between skulls. (Unlike what Mr_Hadamard's annotations explore, I was hoping to not have to do any adaptation to the specific user. Hm.)

Two approaches:

- A dictaphone with a little DSP chip or maybe even an physical structure that performs that transformation for the listener. Suddenly, you sound to yourself on tape just like you sound to yourself when you talk (although it'll sound unnatural to outsiders).

- A skull- or jaw-mounted output device for the dictaphone that causes the head resonance to be added back in to the audio output "naturally". Might have the added benefit of reducing audio output to outside world; maybe this can be altogether inaudible to anyone but you.
-- jutta, Mar 05 2001

"Ear Implants" http://www.duke.edu...othing99/ideas.html
Someone's list of halfbaked ideas that includes one remarkably similar to this one. [egnor, Mar 05 2001]

I like the idea. But I'd much rather have the reverse ability, i.e., to be able to make my voice sound the same to others as it does to me. It's troubling to me that something I think is well-said may instead have been marred by a voice timbre that is beyond my control, and which could be controlled if only I could monitor it accurately.
-- beauxeault, Mar 05 2001


A lot of speech quality is perception. The way I 'hear' myself can be affected by my natural tendency to speak at one rate, and hear at a different rate. So I blabber on like a madman and someone walks up and says "You from the south, aren't you? I can tell because you talk r,e,a,l. s,l,o,w.". So, is a tempo adjustment needed?
-- reensure, Mar 07 2001


In-ear "bone conduction" microphones are readily available. I am told (but have not personally verified) that the sound they record resembles one's "inner voice" much more closely than normal microphones.
-- egnor, Mar 07 2001


I don't like the sound of my voice, but I can get over that somewhat; I usually find that what I say is also somewhat off-point. Any chance that you can develop a version of this that would modify content so that it's reduced to some kind of strange, but not terribly embarassing mumbling?
-- husband_of_bath, Dec 07 2007



random, halfbakery