Usually when you have a smaller speaker, you sacrifice the low end, but earbuds seem to manage to deliver substantial bass nonetheless. I assume the proximity to the eardrum helps, but I don’t fully understand how.
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I know this is ELI5 so I’ll give it a shot but ELI10. Imagine you are visualizing sound waves. The high pitched sounds will have a lot of wave crests in the period of time where the low pitched, bass, sounds will have fewer (i.e. they have higher frequency and/or the wavelengths are shorter). In a sealed cavity like your ear, the waves have to match a frequency in your ear membranes to perceive sound. Further, because the length of the ear canal is so short it is less than one wavelength for bass sounds. Bass sounds are low frequencies from about 20 – 250 Hz. This translates, at the speed of sound to a wavelength of about 17-1.3 meters. So how then is this wave received? Because of its length a lot of it is heard through your bones!! That’s right bass sounds on ear buds can be transmitted through bone and is one reason they are perceived so well. There are actually headphones or buds designed to work specifically through bone (good for hearing impaired people). Studies have shown that the closer a sound generator is to the ear the more of the sound is conducted through the bone and much more is transmitted through the bone for bass than for higher frequency sounds.
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