How do earphones create the illusion of sounds playing behind you?
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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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