How do earphones create the illusion of sounds playing behind you?
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You can only “technically” hear things in one dimension – directly to your left and right. We are able to determine spacial sound because our heads, faces and ears _slightly_ obstruct or alter the sound coming from different directions, as well as the ever so slight timing difference between the sound hitting one ear, then the other. Our brains are able to pick up on those slight changes and determine where the sound came from.
We can mimic those changes, either by using binarual recording or with software, so when we listen via headphones, our brains a tricked into performing those spacial assessments on the playedback sound.
Specifically the AirPods Pro when i’m using dolby spatial. I can’t wrap my head around how I can hear the baselines behind me when the device is inside my ear.
This gets asked quite a bit (in various forms). I’ve explained it before [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ldzj17/ELI5:_In_8D_audio,_how_is_the_audio_able_to_sound_like_it’s_behind_or_in_front_of_you_even_though_there_are_only_left_or_right_outputs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), but the basic idea is that you’re always listening in stereo. All a pair of headphones is doing is mimicking the sounds that each ear gets, and letting your brain make sense of tiny differences that are baked into the recording, maybe using computers for virtual acoustics or maybe by recording with microphones in somebody else’s ears.
Your ears have funny shapes and grooves for a reason. This adds an extra path of travel before the sound enters your ear canal and you actually hear it. These extra delays give your brain a little bit more information so that it can determine directionality.
Earbuds don’t do this. Technically, they could but they would have to simulate your specific ear’s physical features or learn how to trick you by asking you a bunch of questions.
Over the ear headphones can create sound from multiple directions. This will interact with your outer ear (pinna). This is called “soundstage.” There is actually a website that tries to measure this aspect for different models. See [https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tools/table/](https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tools/table/)
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