Eli5 How do speakers turn signals into full sound, it could sound like you’re in front of a concert but it’s just a box
In: 10
I’m going to change the question slightly, but the principle is the same. How can we listen to two earphones, just two sources of sound, but it seems like a whole range of different sources?
The answer is that we’re *always* listening to just two sources of sound. All your brain cares about is the vibrations of your eardrums. When you listen to an orchestra, all the sound waves (which are just wobbles in the air) combine as they enter your ear canal. This combination is what makes your eardrums wobble a particular way. If you replace your eardrums with a pair of microphones, you can record what the wobbles should be. Then, you can pump that through some speakers or earphones, and they just have to recreate the wobble of each eardrum and it should sound the exact same.
There are nuances to this, in terms of the position of your ears, the width of your head, and the specific swirls of your pinnae (the flappy bits of your ears that you can see) which affect the precise feeling and your ability to localise each of the different instruments. But generally speaking, you’ll be able to hear the combined sound because that’s what you’d be hearing anyway!
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