Each person’s directional hearing cues are learned and specific to their own ears

Evidence

The effect is also person specific, as we all have differently shaped ears and learn these cues as we grow up. Thus we get confused for a while when we change our acoustic head shape radically, for example by cutting very long hair short. We also find that if we hear sound recorded through other people’s ears, we may have a different ability to localize the sound, because the interference patterns are not the same as those for our ears. In fact, sometimes this localization capability is worse than when using our own ears, and sometimes it is better. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 732

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• CANDY: A fun conversation fact: hearing through someone else’s ears changes your ability to locate sounds.
• QUESTION: Why would someone else’s pinna cues sometimes localize BETTER than your own? Worth chasing the mechanism.

Related

• Pinna shape creates learned, person-specific comb filters that aid sound localization (similarity 0.89)
• Each person’s directional hearing is calibrated to their own ear shape (similarity 0.88)
• Pinna, head, and torso shapes encode spatial direction into ear-canal sounds (similarity 0.85)
• Individual pinnae shapes make spatial hearing uniquely personal and learned (similarity 0.84)
• The outer ear’s resonant shapes enable front-back sound localization (similarity 0.84)
• Head, torso, and shoulder acoustics shape the localization cues reaching each ear. (similarity 0.83)
• The auditory system continually relearns to decode pinna-imposed spectral cues. (similarity 0.81)
• Ear separation on one axis makes horizontal binaural cues strongest (similarity 0.81)
• Individual ear shapes give each listener a unique head-related transfer function (similarity 0.81)
• Pinna asymmetry creates front-back and elevation cues for directional hearing. (similarity 0.80)
• Each person’s unique ear shape requires individualized acoustic rendering for 3-D audio (similarity 0.80)
• Hearing evolved as an omnidirectional alarm system complementing directional vision (similarity 0.80)
• Spatial hearing is calibrated through learning to each listener’s head and pinna geometry (similarity 0.80)
• Torso and pinna echoes encode sound source direction cues (similarity 0.80)
• The pinna’s folded shape encodes sound direction as spectral echoes (similarity 0.79)