how is music able to be unevenly distributed through headphones?

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You know when you’re listening to layered music and you hear the drums on your left ear, and guitar in the right ear……seems like I don’t notice this when playing old time music, so I assume it’s something that has to be programed? in. Would this mean it takes longer to produce music today than before the widespread use of headphones?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

My god… you don’t know about stereo sound? Lol

Anonymous 0 Comments

So others have mentioned that this is called stereo sound, and no it doesn’t have to be programmed. There is one channel for each headphone, so each ear is getting slightly different audio (surround sound works similarly, there are just more channels).

When mixing, each input (microphone or instrument input) can be panned, meaning you are sending different levels of the signal to the right and left channels. Because our brains locate sounds based in part on the difference in volume received by each ear, the stereo effect makes it seem like that instrument or voice is coming from a certain direction. It is one of the ways to create separation in a mix. The effect is more pronounced when wearing headphones because the speakers are angled wider than say the speakers in your car.

Also, there are stereo recording techniques that are used to create the stereo effect. These are used often when recording ensembles (such as a choir or orchestra) as well as grand pianos or acoustic guitars (in certain circumstances). These techniques use two microphones on the source instead of one. The left microphone is panned hard left and the right microphone is panned hard right. This attempts to recreate what it would sound like if you were actually present.

Anonymous 0 Comments

My parents have a old vinyl record of a train going from left to right, which demonstrated the stereo effect quite well.

I suspect that recording left and right separately is a lot easier in the digital age. You can edit and synchronise the two streams quite easily, unlike the magnetic tapes they used to use.

But I’ve definitely heard old recordings with stereo, specifically orchestral works, where you can hear violins on the one channel and cellos on the other. I imagine a studio recording might have been more likely to record to a single channel.

Anonymous 0 Comments

its called stereo sound. before it was mono phonic sound. the technical aspects is witchcraft created by pink .

fun tip. if one of the earpieces on your head phone breaks. you can change your phones settings to mono sound, you wont miss any music to the loss of stereo until you can get new headphones.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Stereo music has existed since the 1950s, and became increasingly common throughout the 60s and 70s. You don’t need headphones to hear stereo sound, you can hear it with a good speaker system.