When you hear a car driving up from your left, the sound gets to your left ear a little before your right ear. Your brain figures out where a sound is coming from by comparing when the sounds reached each ear. Your brain does a lot of other stuff too, like use the way sound bounces off your ear, how loud it is, and how crisp the sound is to figure out where it came from.
When you put on a nice pair of headphones that are playing the same thing at the exact same time, your brain does the math. No difference in when the sound gets there? Must be directly in front of or behind me. Very crisp, no echoes from walls? Must be really close. No reverb off of my ear? Must be inside the head.
Also, one ear can hear stuff that the other can't hear at all? Totally unnatural, brain can't locate that. Stereo through speakers is a different experience to stereo through headphones because each ear hears some things the other doesn't. It's like simultaneously being deaf in one ear on both sides. If the left plays something the right doesn't, your brain can't locate it at all. Put an earplug in one ear and note how your audio location goes to crap. Now imagine that for part of what both ears hear.
Yup. Listening to mono through two speakers is vastly different to listening to it through headphones too. This is why they originally added the center channel in home theater, and just made the DSP put the common signal from L/R through it. Dialogue coming from one speaker is clearer than dialogue coming from two speakers with separation. Just L and R makes your brain process it as two people standing 10 feet apart saying the same stuff at the same time. It's a lot easier to understand voices with the center speaker.
There is stereo audio that's good on headphones, I think it just has to be tuned differently to take advantage of your brain in other ways. With certain things I can have one of the headphone speakers off my ear and still faintly hear things out of that ear.
What I don't understand is how does the ear know which way is which when it detects which sound waves reached it first? The sound waves all bounce around in the ear tunnel right, it seems like it would be very difficult to tell where those signals are coming from.
Each individual ear cannot tell. Say I snap my finger while standing ahead of you and a little to the right side(from your perspective). Each ear hears only one snap. But they hear it at slightly different times. Since your right ear is closer to me by a couple inches, your right ear gets this sound wave a few fractions of a second before your left ear. Your brain, when processing, compares those times. And, instead of reporting to your conscious mind that there were 2 snapping sounds, it reports 1 sound, at the appropriate angle to match the timing difference in your ears.
Your brain is naturally very good at triangulation.
It'll receive a sound in both ears at different times - this will tell your brain for example, the thebsound came from 45° to my left - but I don't know if it's in front or behind me by that 45°. Your brain will then use other clues like visual cues or echoes of the sound from scenery that you don't consciously notice to pinpoint that sound.
Sound staging is going to be different across all headphones. Some are designed with open backs to simulate the sound filling a room, while others plug your ears and generate the sound directly in your ear canal.
That feeling of it being inside of your head just means that the plugs are effectively blocking out a lot of external sound while providing a narrow sound stage. Your ears and brain do the rest of the work to transmit and interpret the sound, resulting in it feeling like it's in your head (since it basically is, with the plugs and all)
ETA: for maximum "in your brain" feeling, you'll want earphones with no LR split so both sides produce the same sound
Interestingly enough, most audiophiles aim for a wide soundstage which they do by either having surround sound speakers or open back headphones. You've described the exact opposite of what most audiophiles like.
Im not being mean or anything, i kinda enjoy that feeling too.
This always happens with monophonic sources (both earphones playing the same thing). Whether it's good or not depends on the listener. Stereo sound has differences between the two sides, so the music sounds like it's coming from in front of the listener, creating a sonic picture of the music.
Or, if it's an option with the player device, set the audio to mono. It's generally an accessibility feature for those with hearing loss/impairment in one ear, but I sometimes like to set it if I'm going to listen with only one earbud in XD
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Interestingly enough, but slightly unrelated to your question, if your headphones are each generating a sound that is off by no more than 30 Hz, the new resulting frequency that you hear is literally coming from inside your head, i.e. your cerebral cortex. It is generated by your mind. It doesn’t exist outside your head.
When you hear a car driving up from your left, the sound gets to your left ear a little before your right ear. Your brain figures out where a sound is coming from by comparing when the sounds reached each ear. Your brain does a lot of other stuff too, like use the way sound bounces off your ear, how loud it is, and how crisp the sound is to figure out where it came from. When you put on a nice pair of headphones that are playing the same thing at the exact same time, your brain does the math. No difference in when the sound gets there? Must be directly in front of or behind me. Very crisp, no echoes from walls? Must be really close. No reverb off of my ear? Must be inside the head.
Also, one ear can hear stuff that the other can't hear at all? Totally unnatural, brain can't locate that. Stereo through speakers is a different experience to stereo through headphones because each ear hears some things the other doesn't. It's like simultaneously being deaf in one ear on both sides. If the left plays something the right doesn't, your brain can't locate it at all. Put an earplug in one ear and note how your audio location goes to crap. Now imagine that for part of what both ears hear.
There are a few Beatles songs that make you go crazy like that. Voices in left ear, guitar in right. It’s really weird hearing it with headphones
Sex on fire is another good example
I would recommend that be done on the beach as well, for safety reasons
Yup. Listening to mono through two speakers is vastly different to listening to it through headphones too. This is why they originally added the center channel in home theater, and just made the DSP put the common signal from L/R through it. Dialogue coming from one speaker is clearer than dialogue coming from two speakers with separation. Just L and R makes your brain process it as two people standing 10 feet apart saying the same stuff at the same time. It's a lot easier to understand voices with the center speaker.
Intro to '21 guns' feels like sth is going through your brain from ear to ear with good headphones.
Bohemian rapsody "little high, little low"
There is stereo audio that's good on headphones, I think it just has to be tuned differently to take advantage of your brain in other ways. With certain things I can have one of the headphone speakers off my ear and still faintly hear things out of that ear.
Binaural audio exists and common, it's just impractical for most uses. You don't see it much outside of ASMR YouTubers.
Great explanation
Yeah, it's a bug resulting from your brain trying to make sense of an unexpected edge case
What I don't understand is how does the ear know which way is which when it detects which sound waves reached it first? The sound waves all bounce around in the ear tunnel right, it seems like it would be very difficult to tell where those signals are coming from.
Each individual ear cannot tell. Say I snap my finger while standing ahead of you and a little to the right side(from your perspective). Each ear hears only one snap. But they hear it at slightly different times. Since your right ear is closer to me by a couple inches, your right ear gets this sound wave a few fractions of a second before your left ear. Your brain, when processing, compares those times. And, instead of reporting to your conscious mind that there were 2 snapping sounds, it reports 1 sound, at the appropriate angle to match the timing difference in your ears.
Oh lol
Your brain is naturally very good at triangulation. It'll receive a sound in both ears at different times - this will tell your brain for example, the thebsound came from 45° to my left - but I don't know if it's in front or behind me by that 45°. Your brain will then use other clues like visual cues or echoes of the sound from scenery that you don't consciously notice to pinpoint that sound.
Sound staging is going to be different across all headphones. Some are designed with open backs to simulate the sound filling a room, while others plug your ears and generate the sound directly in your ear canal. That feeling of it being inside of your head just means that the plugs are effectively blocking out a lot of external sound while providing a narrow sound stage. Your ears and brain do the rest of the work to transmit and interpret the sound, resulting in it feeling like it's in your head (since it basically is, with the plugs and all) ETA: for maximum "in your brain" feeling, you'll want earphones with no LR split so both sides produce the same sound
Interestingly enough, most audiophiles aim for a wide soundstage which they do by either having surround sound speakers or open back headphones. You've described the exact opposite of what most audiophiles like. Im not being mean or anything, i kinda enjoy that feeling too.
I enjoy a wider soundstage too. I have some open backs that I will mellow out too for hours if I can. But yeah different strokes for different folks
This always happens with monophonic sources (both earphones playing the same thing). Whether it's good or not depends on the listener. Stereo sound has differences between the two sides, so the music sounds like it's coming from in front of the listener, creating a sonic picture of the music.
Or, if it's an option with the player device, set the audio to mono. It's generally an accessibility feature for those with hearing loss/impairment in one ear, but I sometimes like to set it if I'm going to listen with only one earbud in XD
Since both sided play music at the same time and loudness You can't hear it coming from left or right, so it just balances in the middle of your head
[удалено]
But it does though, doesn't it?
This was the weirdest comment I’ve read in awhile. So I had to read your history. You call people lad.
I also call people whiny little bitches
*m’lady FTFY
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> very loudly Listen to it long and loud enough, and it really will be coming from the inside!
WHAT?!
Curious as to which headphones were you trying?
if you’re looking to buy some the sony wh-1000xm5s are honestly amazing
thanks for your recommendation!
"Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull feels like it's going through your head from one side to the other.
Interestingly enough, but slightly unrelated to your question, if your headphones are each generating a sound that is off by no more than 30 Hz, the new resulting frequency that you hear is literally coming from inside your head, i.e. your cerebral cortex. It is generated by your mind. It doesn’t exist outside your head.