Acoustic recordings in human ear canals to sounds at different locations.

The head and pinna shape the sound reaching the tympanum. We explored this signal transformation in humans and a mini basketball for different sound locations in an anechoic chamber. For humans, we embedded microphones in ear molds that were custom fitted to the subject's ear canal. For the ball, the microphones were flush with the surface at +/- 90 degrees azimuths on the equator. Sounds were generated with a custom point source. In the ball, the signal level was nearly flat across frequency, with no gains. In contrast, in the ears, signal level changed in a complex way across frequency, with considerable gains. For frequencies < 2 kHz, the interaural level difference (ILD) increased with decreasing distance similarly in the human ears and ball. For frequencies > 4 kHz, ILDs in the human ears were larger and more complex than those in the ball such that the human ILDs were nonmonotonic with distance whereas the ball ILDs were monotonic with distance. Copyright 2010 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.