What shape are your ears!!

[Tim F]

Hmm as I do sometimes got thinking about this. If I push my ears out the sound from the hifi changes a great deal, it becomes more focussed and louder, is it possible that we appreciate stereos very differently based on this??

I await your opinions.

 

[Dick Bowman]

Some years ago there were things called "Easy Listeners" - or something like that. Leather flaps something like elephant's ears, you strapped them on. Sam Tellig raved about them for a month or so (as usual) in Stereophile. Never saw them in the flesh.

 

[jtc]

Ha ha, I'd *love* to see a picture of those - and the chance to borrow a pair to see my wife's face

 

[RolfeZ]

Is it April 1.?? Anyways, the shape of the ears are an important part of the sound reception. It also helps the brain 'decode' where sounds come from (also based on the time delay between ears). Maybe one should 'tune' the ears as an upgrade to the hifi -haha. At any rate it could explain why people hear different things.

 

[Anex]

Those ear things did work but lets be honest, your not going to wear them are you.

Are you?

 

[Tenson]

At the same time though, because we are so used to hearing through our ears, our minds compensate for things a huge amount.

 

[SteveC]

...because we are so used to hearing through our ears, your minds compensate ...

Yes, but if you said "you" could hear through your eyes, "our" minds would compensate a lot more - or perhaps "make allowances" would be a better phrase. Maybe that remark should be on the dope-smoking thread.

 

[Tenson]

Gosh, it was only a grammatical error. I'm sure you understood what I meant. Now edited.

 

[rsand]

A phenominon I too have noticed, if I fold my arms behind my head (resting back of head on hands) which is a common way to relax, the sound changes quite a lot.

 

[SteveC]

Oooh that's cheating, Tenson! There was nothing wrong with it grammatically. Now posterity doesn't have the pleasure. It was just that the strange fear of doing a Prince Charles by saying "...one...this...one...that" looks odd from where I'm sitting (cunningly getting back to the subject of ears).

 

[Fen Dancer]

 

[jtc]

My God, when I first saw that I thought it was a kind of mutated fœtus... urk!

 

[amir]

Hmm as I do sometimes got thinking about this. If I push my ears out the sound from the hifi changes a great deal, it becomes more focussed and louder, is it possible that we appreciate stereos very differently based on this??

I await your opinions.

I think it's quite room accoustic result and in dead rooms like professional studios i don't think pushing ears make huge difference.

 

[RolfeZ]

I think it's quite room accoustic result and in dead rooms like professional studios i don't think pushing ears make huge difference.

Yes it does. The shape of the ears are important to how the sound is perceived.

 

[Chris]

Any zerogainers happen to be plastic surgeons ? If we can find the best shape lugs to have might be a cheap upgrade. Or what about a brain surgeon to enable us to hear CDs as if they sounded like vinyl with direct inputs to bypass having to buy speakers and things..

 

[RolfeZ]

Actually someone once took the sound from a violin I think it was, recorded it, put it though some fourier transform to split it up into harmonics, took out some of the harmonics and put it back together again and had a hard time telling the difference.
The brain compensates for lacks in the reproduced sound to recreate in the head what it thinks it should be based on experience. Or something like that. In conclusion, going to a concert, listening 'analytically' then go home and look at a picture of a Stradivarius and replaying a sine-wave might be great - haha.

 

[SteveC]

I once did that with an alarm bell, a Nagra tape recorder, a Bruel and Kjær spectrum analyser, a Fortran program, a PDP 11/34 minicomputer and an FM tape recorder running in 1/64 real time (because the computer wasn't quick enough) connected to the back of said mini. It sounded like a bell, yes, but it wasn't hard to tell the difference

 

[RolfeZ]

...It sounded like a bell, yes, but it wasn't hard to tell the difference

It's a little off topic I know, but how many harmonics did you take out? A guess a bell must have even more harmonics than e.g. a violin, hm. maybe not. Don't know.

Cheers
Rolf