Some hear 'Laurel' and some hear 'Yanny?' You decide

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Now, the internet has once again been vehemently divided, thanks to a viral audio clip.

The recording first appeared on r/blackmagicfuckery on Reddit three days ago, but has blown up since the popular YouTuber tweeted it.

An audio expert told CNN that the anomaly is due to the poor quality of the recording, as well as what device people are using to listen to the recording.

So, is it "Yanny" or "Laurel"? Join the conversation on our Facebook page.

The scientific explanation centers more on the quality of the recording and the resonance of speech sounds. Celebs like Ellen DeGeneres, Chrissy Teigen and others too shared what they heard.

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She later added: "I just asked my dad what he heard and he said, "Nothing" and my mom said, "Rural". That is, you can hear while you're asleep, and so in that regard, hearing is passive. Now the internet is in a virtual battle over an audio recording that's either saying "Yanny" or "Laurel," depending on what your ear registers.

So how can people hear two different words from the same recording? Those who hear Yanny hear it in a high, nasaly voice, whereas those who hear Laurel hear it in a very deep voice. But if you're hearing Yanny, you're empirically wrong. The majority of the experiments change the pitch of the sound clip, which does affect which word can be heard.

The audio conundrum has gone viral of course with media houses across the world following the story closely and asking readers to weigh in. Older people tend to lose their hearing earlier than young people, meaning they are more likely to hear "Laurel". He equates the difference in what people are hearing to mishearing song lyrics, where if the lyrics are hard to understand, listeners fill in what their minds say it should be.

"When you have this very isolated sound, which is also not very high-quality, all kinds of things can happen and it doesn't take very much to flip us one way or the other", he says.