eli5: How do speakers know which part of the song to play?

759 views

When I listen to a song on my sound system, one speaker will have the guitar whilst the other will have the vocals. How does the sound system distinguish it within the song?

In: Technology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Someone had to go in and add that information to the recording. Basically, there is data in there that says “ok, play this on the back speaker on the left and play this other bit on the front speaker on the right” And an audio engineer had to set up the recording to do that properly.

Now your question might be “how does a speaker know where it is”

Simple, they don’t. When you hook up a sound system you almost always have to manually hook the speakers up correctly. Basically, you have the plugin the speaker you put in the front on the left into an outlet that’s going to be labeled “this is where you plug in the speaker you are going to put in the front on left”

You are viewing 1 out of 3 answers, click here to view all answers.