Ripon Cathedral's boy and girl choristers sing Ave Maria - can you hear the magic in their voices?
Even to the untrained ear, it is a magical sound.
Choir boys, and more recently choir girls, have been enchanting congregations for centuries with their distinctive voices.
Some say it is their pure tone, others an angelic shimmer, and then there are those who just cannot put their finger on it at all.
At Ripon Cathedral in Yorkshire, only the very best singers are chosen to form part of the choir.
Edmund Aldhouse, assistant director of music at the cathedral, says: "When we do voice trials and auditions for the choir, one thing that we talk about is that sparkle factor: did the boy or the girl shine.
"And it is just something you know, maybe not something you can define."
But that has not stopped researchers from trying to find out.
Professor David Howard, from the University of York, thinks there is more to the choristers' sound than meets the ear.
Working with music trainer Jenevora Williams, from Guildford, he has been trying to pin down exactly what it is in the singers' voices that make them sound so special.
Professor Howard shows science reporter Rebecca Morelle how he carries out experiments in his anechoic chamber
Professor Howard explains: "The hypothesis is, if we can hear a difference, we should be able to see something that will show us what the acoustic attribute is that means that the brain hears it in that way."
But to study this you need an anechoic chamber - a room designed to prevent any sound from being reflected, which means only the purest tones of volunteer singers are recorded.
Professor Howard uses special software to monitor choristers as they sing.
Professor David Howard York University“Maybe you can get to the point where maybe the computer could be at the back of the choir”
It breaks this down into the unique set of frequencies that make up their sound.
And he has found that when choir boys and girls sing, particularly soloists, whose voices can soar above the rest of the choir, certain frequencies peak again and again.
He says: "In our experiments it looks as if that particular 'ring' is happening above the normal speech a
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