Is the sound an object or an experience? For experience to occur you need to have an object(sound or speaking man?), a sense faculty(ear) and a sense consciousness(hearing). If a sound is an object, what is then an experience?
According to MN 18:


  Dependent on the ear and sounds, ear-consciousness arises.


Definitions


Ear = the sensitive part of the ear that is able to detect sound
Sound = vibration
Ear-consciousness = the Thought Moment that is aware of sound


This is the sensing process by which a vibration is registered by the mind. Later thinking processes may combine multiple vibrations into a syllable and multiple syllables into a word. Later thinking processes may recognize the word and start associating a meaning with the word.

So when you "hear a person speaking", it is actually a large number of sensing processes followed by a much larger number of thinking processes.

The sensing process is "impersonal"; a mechanical process that would be the same for you and for me. The thinking process is "personal"; your thinking sequence and my thinking sequence will be different based on our individual past experiences (for example, if the word is in a language that you know but I do not know, then obviously your associations will be very different from my associations).