What is the best way to hear yourself?

Very high quality recording. Phones, typical recorders, etc don’t record all sound wavelengths and parts of your voice are omitted. (Which is why people sound different on the phone, and so many people sound alike.) Other than that, I really don’t know.

@Taciturnu Yeah I thought maybe better quality recording perhaps studio level but even then I’m not 100% sure that is true some artist sound worse live :D haha

seriously though I was hoping there is another way, since I can’t afford that option.

@Steve_A Ah, well those artists don’t use their raw sound; they get it beefed up with all kinds of enhancements! Crazy how so many artists are lacking the talent we think they have. I will tell you totally honestly that Stone Temple Pilots sound as good if not better in concert. I was very impressed with them.

I don’t know of any other ways- sorry!!

An interesting way would be to explore echo’s as they are your voice bouncing back to you and different places will echo differently… also you could try recording your echo as I’m pretty sure that the sound wave is lengthened in echos and then could be scrutinized more closely. Otherwise I’m not too sure… good question!

I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean hear yourself as others hear you? That’s a philosophical issue, not a practical issue. As others have pointed out, you can do recordings, but that leaves out some of the quality of the sound. But that’s only one side of the issue—the other side is how others hear. You can’t know that. You can never know what it’s like.

You can mess around with the acoustics of your own body all you want, but you’ll never know if you get an approximation of how you sound to others. I doubt you will. You’ll always have the connection between your vocal cords and your inner ear that you can’t get around.

So, in the end, you are left with a recording, no matter how poor that is, as the best way,

My advice is that you give up trying. Your recorded voice always sounds different to you when compared to your voice as you speak or sing. Do other people’s voices live and recorded sound the same to you? I think they sound closer to each other than my voice sounds to my recordings, but I don’t remember. I always sound weird in recordings—not how I sound to me.

Then again, the instrument I play sounds different in recordings than it does to me. But listening to other recordings, I find that the same instrument also sounds different from live in a similar way. So I’ve got to think that even the best recording leaves out a lot. Live is the only way to go. And you’ll never hear yourself as others hear you.

@envidula61 I mean if I say something talking or singing how might I actually sound with just myself listening to myself because it might not sound the same as I think or heard it at one point. Since If I understand what I hear is vibration in my I guess entire body, but mostly my head I think right? But the sound out of my mouth is the not same is it?

I’m not asking what other people hear, they will always have their own opinion. I just want to know how I sound, what I think I sound like is it or least close enough to what I thought or want it to be.

Also no one has said that the hands over the ears thing is true or not…?

Surely just listening to yourself talking normally Is the truest way of hearing your own voice. Just talk out loud with no echoes and no other noises and that is your true voice.

Hands over your ears is not an accurate way to judge. I suggest you rent a recording studio for an hour and then listen to the playback. The rental technician at the studio can explain how to use the equipment.

My mom was a Montessori teacher and she made these little devices out of two “elbow” PVC pipes for us kids to read into. Maybe you could try that. or just talk aloud and substract and biases.