iirc it’s because human ears are slightly offset to each other vertically. The brain then calculates the time difference it takes each ear to hear it. Basically triangulation.
I’ve never liked this explanation because if that was all there was to it, it would still only localize to a slanted line in front of us.
Say for example the right ear is higher (I tried finding which one normally is, but couldn’t find a good answer) in this case it would not be feasible without other clues to tell the difference between a sound being higher up and slightly to the left, or lower and slightly to the right. It’s not a significantly different situation from the ears being the same height.
In reality there are other clues, largely based on the shape of our ears slightly changing the sound in learned ways based on the angle it comes from.
iirc it’s because human ears are slightly offset to each other vertically. The brain then calculates the time difference it takes each ear to hear it. Basically triangulation.
I’ve never liked this explanation because if that was all there was to it, it would still only localize to a slanted line in front of us.
Say for example the right ear is higher (I tried finding which one normally is, but couldn’t find a good answer) in this case it would not be feasible without other clues to tell the difference between a sound being higher up and slightly to the left, or lower and slightly to the right. It’s not a significantly different situation from the ears being the same height.
In reality there are other clues, largely based on the shape of our ears slightly changing the sound in learned ways based on the angle it comes from.
Triangulation is 2 dimensional, the 3 dimensional equivalent would be “tetrahedralization”.
Wait what?