How do we know wheather sound is coming from our right, left, front or back???

Question

If sound waves which are directly in front of us or behind us reach both our ears at the same time. Then how do we know if the sound is behind us or in front.

Answer 1

The shape of the human ears affects how sound enters the ear canal providing a slight clue to the location ahead or behind.  There is a slight delay and sound waves are slightly out of phase and slightly masked for one ear when sound comes from one side.  Great sensitivity to slight differences obviously had great survival value (both for prey and predator animals as well as humans).  

Answer 2

our brain tell us that where the sound is coming from.

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Answer 3

Ventriloquism works because you expect the sound to be coming from one place when it is coming from another.  The voice isn't being "thrown", the audience is being misled.  We're not really that good at it.

That said, if you have two ears, if the sound comes from the right, it hits the right ear first. This is detected.

Front and back is harder.  The ear shape helps, but it's complicated. The peculiar shape modifies some frequencies more than others, and it's different from the back than the front.

And you may find yourself turning your head to get better data.

And yet, in a very quiet room - and especially an anechoic chamber, you are capable of passive sonar.  You can often guess the size of an unshielded unseen object, and it's position.  It's pretty scary that it works, even with no training.

Two nuns walked into a bar.

You'd think the second one would have ducked.

Answer 4

It's not just the auditory clues.  When we 'know' where a sound should be coming from that is the direction we perceive it from.  Us old guys remember when they used to actually run 16mm educational movies in the classroom.  The image was in front, but the sound was coming from the projector speaker in the back of the room.  But just about everybody perceived the sound coming from the screen.

Answer 5

then look at the right,left.forward then backward if you found the sound maker then that's it!!!