>New Earplugs Won’t Amplify the Sound of Your Own Voice
I think part of it is that most of us speak more loudly to others when we can't hear them very well, e.g. when wearing headphones or on a mobile in a train
No, it's just a chronic lack of sidetone in these devices.
Sidetone is the small amount of feedback in the earpiece as you speak into the microphone. The telephone company figured this out 100 years ago and then, somehow, we totally dropped it when mobile phones came along. We've been shouting into microphones ever since.
They also used to feed some noise even when no sound was received. Softphones still do this today, it's called comfort noise :) if you have none most callers start wondering if the connection is still active.
Sidetone is the small amount of feedback in the earpiece as you speak into the microphone. The telephone company figured this out 100 years ago and then, somehow, we totally dropped it when mobile phones came along. We've been shouting into microphones ever since.