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I'm wondering if someone can clear up a related question. I've always heard that two ears are needed to identify the direction of sound. However, I can tell the

I'm wondering if someone can clear up a related question. I've always heard that two ears are needed to identify the direction of sound. However, I can tell the direction of a sound when one ear is covered up and without moving my head. Try it yourself: put a TV or other sound source behind yourself, positioned a little to the left or right, cover one ear, and you'll see that you can reliably tell whether it's more left or more right. So I think that something more complicated is going on within the ear and that a single ear is not strictly unidirectional.

boxcardavin 8y ago
Localizing the sound isn't just a matter of hearing a phase shift between your ears, you also have some 'knowledge' about how sound moves in a room, how your ears change the sound, and what frequencies will be more prominent given which side of you the sound is made on. The human brain kills it at real time signal processing.
- mediaman 8y ago
  I read somewhere that the human (and ape) ear has evolved its unique set of grooves and folds to help create sound reflections that allow the brain to better spatially locate sound, even without phase shifting between both ears. This also allows us to locate sound not only spatially along the axis between the ears, but above and below as well. I wonder if people using hearing aides, where the sound is recreated further inside the ear, are less able to locate sound sources.
__float 8y ago
I am deaf in one ear, and I do frequently struggle to determine the direction of sound. For example, if you call my name in a room full of people, or hide my phone and make it ring, I have to rely on non-directional cues to figure it out. (In these cases, recognizing your voice and seeing your face, or walking around and using the volume changes to figure out how far away I am.)
CamperBob2 8y ago
This article might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function Short answer is that yes, the folds of cartilage (pinnae) in your outer ear are there precisely for this reason, to provide some basic directional-sensing functionality with only a single ear.

boxcardavin 8y ago

Localizing the sound isn't just a matter of hearing a phase shift between your ears, you also have some 'knowledge' about how sound moves in a room, how your ears change the sound, and what frequencies will be more prominent given which side of you the sound is made on. The human brain kills it at real time signal processing.

mediaman 8y ago
I read somewhere that the human (and ape) ear has evolved its unique set of grooves and folds to help create sound reflections that allow the brain to better spatially locate sound, even without phase shifting between both ears. This also allows us to locate sound not only spatially along the axis between the ears, but above and below as well. I wonder if people using hearing aides, where the sound is recreated further inside the ear, are less able to locate sound sources.

__float 8y ago

I am deaf in one ear, and I do frequently struggle to determine the direction of sound. For example, if you call my name in a room full of people, or hide my phone and make it ring, I have to rely on non-directional cues to figure it out. (In these cases, recognizing your voice and seeing your face, or walking around and using the volume changes to figure out how far away I am.)

CamperBob2 8y ago

This article might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function Short answer is that yes, the folds of cartilage (pinnae) in your outer ear are there precisely for this reason, to provide some basic directional-sensing functionality with only a single ear.