Because the audio signal is either sent to the left or the right.
Wired headphones have 3 or 4 connections in the jack left, right, ground, and mic. When an audio track is made part of the recording is the balance of left and right channels. So if you make a song you could say all drums always come from the left, then when you play it back it would send drums down the 'left' wire.
Wireless headphones are the same idea but with radio waves instead of wires, sometimes there's a wire through the headband, sometimes it's another tiny radio going through your head so that left and right talk to one another.
This idea is generally referred to as "audio channels" surround sound systems can be 5, 7, or more channels, with movie theaters being 20 or more, with subwoofers getting special notation and their own channel 5.1 meaning 5 channels (left, right, center, back left, back right) and one sub woofer for deep bass. Again which sound goes to which speaker depends on how the audio was mixed when recorded. And all a mixer is doing here is directing audio 'traffic' to the different channels the creator wants
Northern64 t1_j1q8ix4 wrote
Reply to Eli5: When listening to music with headphones, how are some sounds only on the left or the right earphone? by JustTransportation51
Because the audio signal is either sent to the left or the right.
Wired headphones have 3 or 4 connections in the jack left, right, ground, and mic. When an audio track is made part of the recording is the balance of left and right channels. So if you make a song you could say all drums always come from the left, then when you play it back it would send drums down the 'left' wire.
Wireless headphones are the same idea but with radio waves instead of wires, sometimes there's a wire through the headband, sometimes it's another tiny radio going through your head so that left and right talk to one another.
This idea is generally referred to as "audio channels" surround sound systems can be 5, 7, or more channels, with movie theaters being 20 or more, with subwoofers getting special notation and their own channel 5.1 meaning 5 channels (left, right, center, back left, back right) and one sub woofer for deep bass. Again which sound goes to which speaker depends on how the audio was mixed when recorded. And all a mixer is doing here is directing audio 'traffic' to the different channels the creator wants