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?

Question

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?

In: Other

Answer 1

I think you’re getting different answers because some people don’t know what 8D audio Is (I didn’t know about it until I saw this and looked up an example). The top comment is good, but it is answering a different question (it explains why we can detect if a sound is behind or in front of us in REAL LIFE scenarios, not with headphones in, like the “8D” audio).

With headphones on, as far as I’m aware, there’s no way you can detect if a sound is behind or in front of you, because you can’t turn your head (see the top comment for how this helps in real life).

Instead, it is more like an auditory illusion. Think of it like that optical illusion of the ballerina spinning: some people tend to see it spinning in one direction, others tend to see it spinning the other way. The same thing happens here. The sound is moving from side to side, but your brain wants to interpret it as moving in a circle, so sometimes it sounds like it’s in front of you, and other times behind you. But just like in the case with the ballerina, some people might think the sound is moving around you clockwise, and others might think it is going counter clockwise.

So while you might hear the sound as “in front” of you, someone else might hear it as “behind”

Edit: I should say this applies if you’re wearing “regular” headphones. If you have headphones that have speakers aimed at different parts of your ear, then it might be possible to simulate sounds being in front/behind, based on the spectral cues mentioned in the top comment by u/TorakMcLaren

Edit #2: I suppose an audio engineer could also simulate the spectral cues (ex. Add bass to sounds to make them sound behind you) but I don’t know how effective that would be, since the ability to turn your head is much more important for distinguishing where sounds come from.

In either case, these “8D” audios are almost certainly not doing the things I mentioned in my edits, so the explanation is probably just the auditory illusion