Using just our two ears we are able to easily pinpoint sounds coming from every direction around us. In most cases our two ears pick up these sounds differently and this, combined with the filtering action of each ear on all sounds that enter the ear canal, allows our brain to figure out where a sound emanates from.

However everyone’s ears have a unique shape and position – even between one’s left and right ears – and this means that everyone hears sounds quite differently. Normally this is not even noticed since we ‘learn’ how to hear from an early age, and our ears only change slowly as we grow older.

Nevertheless if we were able to listen to what another person was hearing through their ears we would probably be confused, and in particular we would complain that the spatial positioning of the sounds were often badly distorted. Sounds that would normally be in front of us might appear behind us, frontal sound imaging is often lost, and the overall timbre of every sound would also be wrong. Of course our brain could learn and adapt to these new ears, but this process might take days or weeks of continuous listening.