Originally Posted by
Saracen999
The "two ears" bit confuses me a little. After all, I've still only got two ears when listening to speakers or if (hopefully not) wandering through a jungle trying to hear the hungry carnivorous animal that thinks I'm lunch.
That the sound with speakers (or jungles) comes from from varying distances at varying strengths and the brain processes that into usable data .... that, I get. But software ought to be able to simulate that.
What I don't know, one way or the other, is whether the shape of our ears, all the little grooves and channels, nooks and crannies, somehow helps in basic signal processing 'proper' sounds, even from speakers, in a way that might simple not be possible for headphones or in-ear devices simply because they're too close, too mono-directional, for it to work.
My guess is that it does to something unrecreateable (for now) but I don't know it does.
What I do find fascinating is quite where the processing, be it sight, sound, taste or touch, happens. I mean, eyes for instance. It's easy to consider them kind-of analogous to personal built-in cameras we see with but in reality, they're more like digital camera sensors detecting light and turning it into electronic (neural) data sent to the brain. It's the brain that we "see" with. Ditto for taste, hearing, etc. So sure, any problems or damage to the 'sensors' affects our ability to see, hear, taste etc but it's because the data sent to the brain changes.
Just like we can 'process' visual signals and 'see' what our brain thinks matters, and not see other things that are there because the brain dismisses them due to context (think about dancing gorilla experiments), the same is true of hearing. Back in my uni days I went to stay at a friend's house for the weekend. Unbeknown to me, they lived right next to (and I mean like 60 feet from) a mainline railway track. I'd been there about 30 minutes when an intercity train thundered past going pretty much full tilt. I thought the sky was falling in. "What's that noise?" I said.They all looked puzzled for a moment, then the penny dropped. "Oh, just a train. The track's at the bottom of the garden".
I didn't sleep a wink that first night, being woken with a start every time a train went past. To me, it was an unexpected noise. They all, unless it was pointed out to them, just didn't "hear" them. I mean, their ears transmitted the same signals mine did, but their brains said "Irrelevant, no threat, filter that". Like dancing gorillas.
Anyway, sorry Trig, gone off on a tangent there.
My point .... is it possible, even with the point-source nature of headphones or even in-ear to simulate what those nooks, channels, grooves etc do, and therefore simulate directionality via headphones? I would have thought so with the level of DSP available these days. But in the headphones/IEMs? I would have thought it could be done but whether it has? Dunno. Also, dunno what they might cost, but even decent noise cancelling, which I'd have thought was simple by comparison, ain't cheap. And, there's a world of difference between good DSP and cheap DSP, and between good noise cancelling and cheap noise cancelling. Buyer beware, I'd think.