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.
In: 2000
Even if you have good quality earbud you have to create a good seal to your ear opening or those lower frequencies are greatly reduced.
Your ear canal generates the bass. Take a small speaker and place it in a corner of your room. Notice how the bass arrives.
Hijacking this for a Follow Up question: So when it comes to ear damage, do earbuds affect the ear the same as if listening to eqivalently set up speakers? Or is it more of a psychoacoustic thing?
There isn’t really a “LI5” explanation, and a number of the explanations I’ve seen are wrong (or at least, not complete).
But basically the lower bass frequencies are longer sound waves. To hear these at long distances, you need a large speaker. Treble frequencies are shorter sound waves, so to hear these at long distances you only need a smaller speaker. This is the general principle that you noted.
However, in near distances this relationship doesn’t apply; you get all sounds being emitted. It’s just that the lower, longer, sounds don’t project (for complex reasons which need advanced math to appreciate). So with earbuds in your ear, you’re able to hear all frequencies. Pull them out of your ears, and you’ll still hear the higher, shorter sounds since the small earbuds can project those, but you’ll lose the longer, lower bass frequencies.
See Near Field vs Far Field here: https://community.sw.siemens.com/s/article/sound-fields-free-versus-diffuse-field-near-versus-far-field
Latest Answers