How do they do that

[aitm]

You may add your own question for others in their profession:

The wife bought me a set of Bang Olufsen headphones because she knows i like to listen to head music from the 70's before I go to bed. Great headphones by they way. Now perhaps this is one of those things where I am the weird one,,,haha..yeah I get it…..anyhoo..

Sometimes for instance the "surround sound" goes from the left ear over the top of the head to the right ear to the bottom of the chin and the to the left ear again before they hit it all together for the ..blah blah

Other times the "surround sound" goes from the left ear to the front of the face to the right and then behind the head and back to he left ear..

How the hell do they do that? I mean I can only assume you hear it the same way, how can they make the sound feel like in one instance it goes circular around your head and in other times it goes circular in front of your head…know what  I mean?

[Baruch]

Speculation ... there is more than one channel, and there is a mixer that is shifting the physical focus of the sound from one point to another.  This could happen during recording (moving mikes) or during post-production (at editing) or maybe even as part of what your audio system or headphones are doing.  I would suspect it was there, but not apparent with mono output .. and created by editing multiple mikes during post-production.  Stereo but with audio not visual.

[Hakurei Reimu]

I'm now looking at the Bang Olufsen website, and I've yet to find an over-the-ear headphone set that even claims to be "surround sound," so what you're likely hearing is an illusion. Proper surround sound really shouldn't drift like that if the recording people know what their doing, because each microphone is supposed to be fixed to approximately where you would put a speaker element in your home. What may actually be happening is that there may be a little distortion in the audio channels, or introduced by your setup, or because your ears just plain aren't perfect, such that your brain is trying to make sense out of noise.

Surround sound is really a bag of tricks to exploit the fact that your brain is going to try to figure out where sounds are coming from. It's a neat and enriching bag of tricks, but it's still a bag of tricks.

[SGOS]

That sounds neat.  My headphones go from ear to ear.  If a sound passes from one side to the other I lose track of the direction of the source as it passes.  Then it reestablishes itself in my other ear.  I have no idea how two speaker headphones could identify direction that well.

[aitm]

Okay to be fair the headsets are not "surround sound" I used the term rather loosely, I just meant that it seems like they were able to make the music stereo rotate axially somehow. Thought it was pretty neat how they could do that. I mean its not a distraction, it was obviously done during the recording process and simply amplified by good headphones, so it was made to do that, just thought it was cool and wondered if there was a term for it other than drug induced.

[widdershins]

With a little bit of research I think I am able to explain this.  When we think of headphones we (at least, I) generally have thought of them as having a speaker in each and that's that.  Apparently, that's not how it works any more.  Instead of speakers they now have "drivers", of which there are two types.  There are dynamic drivers and balanced armature drivers.  Dynamic drivers are a lot like speakers and pretty good at producing bass, but difficult to miniaturize.  Balanced armature drivers use an armature which moves back and forth, vibrating a diaphragm.  These are easier to miniaturize.

So, to have true "surround sound" headphones all you would have to do would be to put 10 drivers in it, 5 in each side.  They would be placed in different positions at different angles.  I'm pretty sure the signal would have to be digital to get the surround sound effect since you can't drive 10 different "speakers" with only 2 signals (plus a ground).

I got this information from http://gizmodo.com/5371253/giz-explains-why-you-cant-get-decent-earphones-for-less-than-100

There is another way this can be done, though.  It uses, as near as I can tell, trickery and magic, mixing the signals over only 2 drivers to cause the illusion that the sound is coming from a specific direction.  This type of headphone is called "virtual surround sound" and can work with only 2 "speakers".  They do this by directing the sound wave, not directly into the ear canal, but to the ear itself, doing a kind of bank-shot into the ear canal.

I got this information from http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/08/02/surround-sound-headphones-explained

So there you have it.  It's through the magic of science!

[aitm]

With a little bit of research I think I am able to explain this.  When we think of headphones we (at least, I) generally have thought of them as having a speaker in each and that's that.  Apparently, that's not how it works any more.  Instead of speakers they now have "drivers", of which there are two types.  There are dynamic drivers and balanced armature drivers.  Dynamic drivers are a lot like speakers and pretty good at producing bass, but difficult to miniaturize.  Balanced armature drivers use an armature which moves back and forth, vibrating a diaphragm.  These are easier to miniaturize.

So, to have true "surround sound" headphones all you would have to do would be to put 10 drivers in it, 5 in each side.  They would be placed in different positions at different angles.  I'm pretty sure the signal would have to be digital to get the surround sound effect since you can't drive 10 different "speakers" with only 2 signals (plus a ground).

I got this information from http://gizmodo.com/5371253/giz-explains-why-you-cant-get-decent-earphones-for-less-than-100

There is another way this can be done, though.  It uses, as near as I can tell, trickery and magic, mixing the signals over only 2 drivers to cause the illusion that the sound is coming from a specific direction.  This type of headphone is called "virtual surround sound" and can work with only 2 "speakers".  They do this by directing the sound wave, not directly into the ear canal, but to the ear itself, doing a kind of bank-shot into the ear canal.

I got this information from http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/08/02/surround-sound-headphones-explained

So there you have it.  It's through the magic of science!

Well thank you very much. Gotta love that magic!

[widdershins]

No problem.  The real magic, though, is the magic of Google, which knows all.  It's amazing how they can pull something like that off at all.  They shouldn't be able to.  Electrical theory and sound theory are, after all, "only" theories.

[SGOS]

The wife bought me a set of Bang Olufsen headphones

Are these the ones? 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R45Z2WU/ref=dra_a_rv_ss_hn_xx_P1400_1000?tag=dradisplay-20&ascsubtag=c1df8f8ea5589a25457da5ae44348e2c_S

[aitm]

Are these the ones? 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R45Z2WU/ref=dra_a_rv_ss_hn_xx_P1400_1000?tag=dradisplay-20&ascsubtag=c1df8f8ea5589a25457da5ae44348e2c_S

Damn, I hope she didn't spend that much. But yeah dats dem.