[qnleigh]

Tangential but hopefully related enough to be of interest; is there similar variability with the "mind's ear?" If you imagine someone saying "hello," does it make sense to then ask things like whether the voice was male or female?Personally, I can 'hear' imagined sounds in quite a lot of detail. I'm not aphantasic, but images are less vivid than audio for me.

Oddly, I realized a few years ago that most of my dreams have no direct audio content. There are no sounds when people talk ; speech is implicit. I asked around and my impression is that this is unusual. However every once in a while I will have a dream with incredibly vivid, apparently novel music, as if every note on every instrument is actually being played in my head. I still remember the main melody from the last song that I dreamt this way.