this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's the neat part, the brain does that using some black magic. You just have to add all the sounds individual waves together and the brain deciphers it.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, we just have two ear canals. Stereo is basically all your brain will get.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's true that the ears receive stereo input, but brain postprocesses it to make surround sound. It uses the time difference from sound hitting your right and left ear to do some black magic and figure out at which angle the sound is coming from.

Another interesting part on this is that the brain is pretty bad at detecting whether a sound is coming from the front or back of the head so it uses visual cues and combines it with the processed sound to make it seem like it's coming from either the front or the back.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The shape of the ear plays part in the perception of sounds that come directly from front, back, top or bottom.