How it works

When you listen to headphones, the sound seems to come
from inside your head. For instance, when a violin
is playing only on the left headphone, the sound appears
to come from just inside your left ear. A tuba only in
the right headphone comes from just inside the right ear.
A trumpet that plays on both the left
and right headphones sounds like it comes from the center of your head. This means
that the sound stage for the music extends
from the right ear to the left ear through
the head. Many people find this annoying
and fatiguing, like someone shouting in their ears.

Earwax gets the music out
of your head. It moves the sound stage to infront of you, just like listening to speakers. This is the way music is meant to be listened to.

Earwax does this in two ways: physics and a psychoacoustics.

Physics: Earwax encodes sounds using Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). This is a simulation of the sound deviations that your external ear provides. (Yes, those silly things on the side of your head are actually useful. To understand how your ears effect your hearing, watch your tv while mushing them around and listen
to the difference in the sound).

The external ear modifies sound differently depending on the direction of the sound. In the diagram below we see digital filters encode the left channel as if it was coming from 30 degrees left of the left ear [H 0,30(f)], and 330 degrees from the right ear [H 0,330(f)]. This creates a free-field simulation for headphones.

Psychoacoustics: Earwax gives you a set of virtual external ears using digital filters, but the brain must adapt to these new ears. Your brain has a memory of certain sounds and environments, which it uses to localize new sounds in new environments. To adapt to the new earwax environment, simply listen to the effect while imagining the sound coming from speakers in front of you. This is the psychoacoustic part of the effect. Sufficient audio cues are present to localize the headphone sound stage outside your head, but it is how you perceive the cues that completes the illusion.

Some people hear the effect right away, others will have
to listen a number of times before the sound moves outside
their head. Still others may never hear the effect, because
some people are very visually-oriented and have not learned
to localize sound well.

Please record your earwax experience with our feedback form, so we can continue to improve it.

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