OK folks, this is a weird one. Supposedly there's a big split over what people hear in this clip, but to me it seems obvious it's a guy saying "撮ったのかよ". Even native Japanese people are split on what they hear, some only able to hear エーアイアイ. What do you hear? And anyone know why some people hear one thing and others another thing entirely??

Here's the clip:

It'd be nice if we could make polls for things like this^^

I only hear "エーアイアイ."

「撮ったのかよ」にしか聞こえない…
あれれ？

I mean it literally has to be saying 撮ったのかよ because it's right after a photo has been taken, so エーアイアイ doesn't make sense to say... Yet people hear that. Some people can hear both, I wonder if that qualifies as having a superpower.

I hear 通ったのかよ.

(2015-12-08, 12:00 pm)Roketzu Wrote: I mean it literally has to be saying 撮ったのかよ because it's right after a photo has been taken, so エーアイアイ doesn't make sense to say... Yet people hear that. Some people can hear both, I wonder if that qualifies as having a superpower.

I clearly hear 撮ったのかよ, and my listening is still abysmal, so it's not a matter of japanese proficiency. It seems a case like that of the "white or blue dress", that went viral some months ago (at least here in Italy)!

It's definitely saying 撮ったのかよ
I don't think it's anything like the blue/white dress, because that's a known phenomenon (they just changed the white balance, IIRC; but similar optical illusions can be created with physical, rather than digital, manipulation); there's no manipulation going on, so what you hear is entirely up to your ears and brain.
There's no way that it's エーアイアイ though, because there's very clear お sounds in there at the beginning and end (the one in the middle would be easier to miss, but it's still there); no い to be found.

Maybe if there's an audio wizard among us, they can look at the wave forms and give some hard evidence (beyond the fact that we know for a fact that it's saying 撮ったのかよ), maybe explain why people can hear something completely different.

i'm getting weird blue dress vibes.
I only hear エーアイアイ in the clip. cannot imagine how that could possibly sound like とったのかよ
there are no お sounds whatsoever... kreepy

update... this is officially an audio version of the blue dress.

apparently we process audio frequencies differently and if you play the audio at different speeds you can see how it becomes either とったのかよ or エーアイアイ.

fascinating

This was in the recommended videos in the video OP linked:

It tries to explain things and also at the end slows it down and then speeds it up. The phonetician (I guess that's what the guy would be called?) explains it in pretty easy terms, although I don't really agree with his conclusion about how foreigners and children would hear "エーアイアイ" because they lack a bias towards hearing "撮ったのかよ". Mainly because I still can't understand how people would hear エーアイアイ when listening at full speed.

Very interesting! I can only hear 撮ったのかよ. Wow, this is like the dress photo...

I can only hear 撮ったのかよ in that whole video until they slow it down at the end.

What's really weird is the video with the different speeds; I can get parts of that to sound like either 撮ったのかよ or エーアイアイ depending on what I think of or which text I look at while I'm listening to it. For instance, the one at 4-6 seconds I can get to be either by looking at either the top or bottom text of the video. But in the original video at the top I can only hear 撮ったのかよ even if I try really hard to hear エーアイアイ instead.

EDIT: I tried closing my eyes and saying silently 撮ったのかよ along with the sound while listening to the whole second video, and then doing it again wtih エーアイアイ. It's creepy because if I say 撮ったのかよ to myself while it's playing, the whole video sounds like 撮ったのかよ to me. But if I say エーアイアイ to myself, then it's still mostly 撮ったのかよ but a few of them starting about 4 seconds in suddenly sound like エーアイアイ instead.

This is so weird, I l listened to all the clips, but I can only hear 撮ったのかよ
Until the last clip at 5:21 it finally sounds like エーアイアイfor a few rounds before turning back into 撮ったのかよ
I can't fathom how people can hear エーアイアイ at normal speed...

I asked a couple of random non-Japanese speaking English speakers, and got:
"door-doh-gayo" ["no 'r', but the vowel sound of 'door'"]
"bo<glottal stop> dao gao"
"tor tau keau"

which suggests that there are still consonant sounds in there and it's not just our brains making them up completely (or possibly just that English-speaking brains make up different syllables).

I always hear 撮ったのかよ, even in the video with all the different speeds.

My girlfriend is here though, and is Japanese.  She originally could only hear 撮ったのかよ but she says for the slowed down ones in the video she hears エーアイアイ.

(My impression a couple minutes after writing this: There's a high pitch and a low pitch playing simultaneously, and it just depends on which pitch you're concentrating on.  Both bass and soprano notes stand out naturally so you could take either as being dominant, and if you concentrate on the bass notes you'll hear 撮ったのかよ and with the soprano notes エーアイアイ.  So if you have any background in music try thinking of it like that.)

Is there a good Japanese language voice recognition software?  It would be fun to see what a robot thinks about this important question.

(2015-12-08, 3:17 pm)dtcamero Wrote: update... this is officially an audio version of the blue dress.

apparently we process audio frequencies differently and if you play the audio at different speeds you can see how it becomes either とったのかよ or エーアイアイ.

fascinating

I hear 撮ったのかよ no matter the frequency, but maybe having read the sentence beforehand and having seen that the context is actually taking a photograph is conditioning me?

(2015-12-10, 2:11 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Is there a good Japanese language voice recognition software? It would be fun to see what a robot thinks about this important question.

The last I heard from some University researchers were about AmiVoice and some other "project title", of which I cannot recall the name of it at the moment.  

Pepper ロボット is gaining some traction with some human beings.  
http://www.softbank.jp/robot/consumer/products/

http://www.cnet.com/news/caring-pepper-r...-a-minute/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...es-on.html

There are quite a few factors (such as Man, Machine, Material and Medium) involving the listening process. It would take me ages to talk about it.  

Just a simple example:

Quote:People who learn a technique called analytic listening can hear individual harmonics as separate pitches, but the vast majority of us hear a single pitch, typically determined by the fundamental frequency. The presence or absence of frequencies above (and in some cases, below) the fundamental gives the sound its tone color, or timbre.

http://www.emusician.com/gear/1332/pitch...ency/36924

(2015-12-11, 10:51 am)eslang Wrote: There are quite a few factors (such as Man, Machine, Material and Medium) involving the listening process. It would take me ages to talk about it.  

Just a simple example:

Quote:People who learn a technique called analytic listening can hear individual harmonics as separate pitches, but the vast majority of us hear a single pitch, typically determined by the fundamental frequency. The presence or absence of frequencies above (and in some cases, below) the fundamental gives the sound its tone color, or timbre.

http://www.emusician.com/gear/1332/pitch...ency/36924

So people with a musical background are more likely to be able to hear, recognize, and process (more/all) of the frequencies, resulting in being able to hear 撮ったのかよ (or being able to hear either)?

I hear 撮ったのかよ even in the altered versions.

(2015-12-11, 1:18 pm)sholum Wrote:

(2015-12-11, 10:51 am)eslang Wrote: There are quite a few factors (such as Man, Machine, Material and Medium) involving the listening process. It would take me ages to talk about it.  

Just a simple example:

Quote:People who learn a technique called analytic listening can hear individual harmonics as separate pitches, but the vast majority of us hear a single pitch, typically determined by the fundamental frequency. The presence or absence of frequencies above (and in some cases, below) the fundamental gives the sound its tone color, or timbre.

http://www.emusician.com/gear/1332/pitch...ency/36924

So people with a musical background are more likely to be able to hear, recognize, and process (more/all) of the frequencies, resulting in being able to hear 撮ったのかよ (or being able to hear either)?

I think the point was more general about the subjectivity of what we hear. If you're not aware timbre is the quality of a sound i.e. the difference between a note played on a piano vs one played on a violin. This difference results from the fact that we never actually produce a single note and the extra notes, known as overtones, obviously affect what we hear. It's not standard musical training to be able to hear these overtones individually although I imagine the training is similar to identifying notes in a chord.

I just hear 撮ったのかよ。 I can't hear エーアイアイ at all as much as I tried.

[s0apgun]

Same. Only hearing 撮ったのかよ in all the videos

(2015-12-10, 2:38 pm)poblequadrat Wrote:

(2015-12-08, 3:17 pm)dtcamero Wrote: update... this is officially an audio version of the blue dress.

apparently we process audio frequencies differently and if you play the audio at different speeds you can see how it becomes either とったのかよ or エーアイアイ.

fascinating

I hear 撮ったのかよ no matter the frequency, but maybe having read the sentence beforehand and having seen that the context is actually taking a photograph is conditioning me?

Oh, I can now switch between 撮ったのかよ and エーアイアイ depending on what I'm reading as long as the pitch/speed isn't too high.

If you want to hear エーアイアイ, try watching dtcamero's video, looking at the エーアイアイ line while you listen, and thinking エーアイアイ to yourself in time with the speech. This is the only way I can hear it, and it's creepy how it can switch back and forth depending on what I'm thinking about.