on a bit of a tangent here... (not a joke)

There is another kind of "skin effect" which supposes that the geometry
of the face and ears play a huge role in how we resolve the source of a
sound in space. Specifically, components above a couple KHz like to
stick to the surface of your head, resulting in low frequencies hitting
the ears mostly directly, but with increasing frequency there is a very
complex mix of phase shift and reflections created by the outside of
your noggin that the brain needs in order create the sense that we call
"soundstage". Just looking at the funny shape of the outer ear indicates
there's a whole lot of "mechanical" processing going on there. This is
why headphones, althgouh they can have extremely _clear_ sound, are not
real good at putting the sounds all around you in space.

Some guys are working to model this phenomenon and create filters for
headphones that go way beyond simply mixing in a little sound from the
other channel:

http://www.headphone.com/products/faqs/about-headroom-crossfeed/fixing-headphones-with-electronics/


-- 
seanadams
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