I swear it’s ‘Yanny.’ Everyone around me in the office huddled together and we all heard ‘Yanny.’ But apparently some hear ‘Laurel.’ 

A soundbite on Vocabulary.com under the entry for the word “laurel” has gone viral around the world as people, including me, hear the word ‘Yanny.’ The audio clip was posted to reddit, and then shared on Twitter by Cloe Feldman, a social media influencer with over 610,000 followers. 

Apparently, there is actual science behind it. Apparently, what you hear depends heavily on your audio equipment. If you;re headphones or speakers emphasize higher frequencies, you’re more likely to hear ‘Yanny’, while boosted bass makes it more likely for you to hear ‘Laurel.’

You are also more likely to hear what you want to hear. What you expect to hear depends on all sorts of psychology at a subconscious level. Older people are also apparently more likely to hear ‘Laurel’, as a loss of hearing is usually greater in the higher-frequency range. 

There are even more explanations- the acoustics of the room you’re in, the differences in compression software between Twitter and other websites, and the frequencies your brain is more used to picking up on. Some people claim that they hear both if they play with the pitch and bass levels of the recording. 

I don’t know what the fuss is about. It is clearly just a clip of someone saying ‘Yanny.’

Here’s the clip below: