Depends upon the audio speed. Not all people hear sound vibrations at the same speed. If a violin and a piano make sound waves with the same amplitude and frequency, how come they sound so different? If the waves are identical, why don’t the two instruments sound exactly the same?
There’s a basic wave with a certain amplitude and pitch, called the fundamental, and on top of that there are lots of higher and lower-pitched sounds called harmonics/overtones or petal tones. Each harmonic has a frequency that’s exactly two, three, four, or however many times higher or lower than the fundamental.
Every time there is a sound, you “can” hear all of these if you have super hearing. Most people are limited to a few notes above or below the fundamental. Trained musicians hear more. Some animals much more and computers unlimited.
I listened to an experiment with this entry done on a conservative station in the northwest, and with the speed of the sound sped up or lowered down, I heard both the words they are describing, Laurel and Yanny. I do not know which one is harder to hear or more impressive. But that’s the difference. It is just natures way of messing with you.
And something for the media to stall time to try to hide from the NY Times admittance there is no smoking gun with Trump and he broke no law to be ostracized for in print. And that the federal government let the real criminals go with illegal use of computers and attempts to burn Trump during the election by gaining information from sources inside and outside the white house and the DNC while spending billions of taxpayer dollars on an investigation using questionable sources and planted people. Smoke and mirrors.
rwood
Apparently the original recording was “Laurel”. Then someone filtered it to remove some of the bass components. Based on our hearing sensitivity, some of us hear “Yanny”.
My wife hears “Laurel” and I hear “Yanny”.
There is an link on the New York Times site that has a slider that varies how much of the bass is removed:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html
You can vary the filter so that everyone hears “Laurel” or everyone hears “Yanny”. You can even find a spot for most individuals where they hear a mix of the two words.
The speed-up or slow-down effect you describe is pretty much the same thing, since speeding up means shifting to higher frequencies.
So now there two things that the NYT is good for: real-time election night results, and disntinguishing Laurel vs. Yanny.