Teach yourself to echolocate (2018)

This is often used by audio mixing engineers and taught in a roundabout way at schools and studios. We think a lot about where thins “sit” in the mix. Proximity wise, and even height wise in a stereo mix. Eventually you learn how to locate things in headphones and it’s a really weird sensation when you realize you can do it. The kicker is we start out by simulating real environments in mixes, but then end up having to simulate what people expect from the medium as opposed to real life. For example something I learned doing video audio, if someone is writing something on a train, viewers expect to hear the pen on paper. But irl, there’s not a chance it’s audible. Explosions are always distorted because microphones end up clipping due to the volume, etc.

A great book on spatial simulation is The Art of Mixing by David Gibson. Older but forever relevant

You went on quite many topics there. Could you expand on the proximity and height? Fascinating

The closest analogue I can think of is how due to practice now anyone can close their eyes and imagine typing entire essays how they know exactly where the keys are. Try it.

I have played alot of videogames & at some point identified, how can I guess, the source of sounds. Guess, because it's nowhere near actual approximation. Most often, source is guessed by context. E.g. The door knocking sound illusion, which was used to troll streamers.

Then you have directional localisation based on delay between ears, difference in volume & properties of reverberations. Things to the sides are going to arrive in either ear at different moment. Add source if first echo & you have confirmation that a sound is coming from either right or left. The more directly to the side is the sound, the bigger the delay between ears is, so you get approximate angle.

Now we consider sound muffling, caused by shape of our head & ears. Things in front are going to sound clearer in the opposite ear, than sounds from the back.

The same principle is used for detection of height. Things below are going to get muffled, things above will be clearer. In reality, feeling sounds with the whole body helps in source localisation, which can't be emulated with headphones.