I listen to music while working through earbuds – actually through only one earbud, so I can also hear goings on in the office. I was wondering with the whole left brain / right brain difference is there any difference to people’s perception of music heard through only one ear?
My ear of choice is based on having ear near my cubicle door unobstructed so I can hear people stopping by to ask me a question.
I have no opinion on left ear vs. right, but I will say I have faced similar needs, and have been grateful that a lot of music by my favorite artists (Beatles and Dylan) is available in mono. In fact, I’ve long wished iTunes had a “convert to mono” feature for this and other circumstances (for instance, using a single plug-in speaker).
Sorry to jack your thread. Someone with actual knowledge may now contribute.
Stereo works by having different sounds in the left and right sides. If you only use one earbud, you’re not hearing the whole mix. In some cases, Windy by The Association comes to mind, the lead vocal may be on one side and the backups in the other. This leads to having a choice between
“… … … … STOR MEE EYES … … … … SOUND OF LIES”
and
"And Windy has … … … That flash at the … … … "
So, if I can’t use both ears I’d rather not listen at all.
I use a pair of these Bose Noise Cancelling Ear buds at work and can have both ear buds in and still hear whats going on around me really good. Don’t have to turn up the music very loud because it cancels out the background noise in the room. So good in fact that I’ve worn them in bars to kill the background noise and found that they are great for jogging since you can hear traffic and people on bikes with them on. Pretty expensive yes but I feel that they are the best one of the best audio products to come out in years.
Technically, your left hemisphere is better at language processing normally, so your right ear would be better for lyrics. The right hemisphere might pick up on the rhythm aspects of music, though. Things like prosody (non-linguistic aspects of speech). I doubt you’ll find any huge difference between the ears, though.
For me, left ear because that’s how I use a phone. Except for now as I have a wound on the left.
Nitpick: ear buds are like what comes default with an iPod. They all suck and are worse for your hearing. You want in-ear monitors/the kind that go into the canal and blocks outside noise better.
Oh, and mine are normally asymmetric, so putting it in the wrong ear is awkward.
The whole right-brained/left-brained thing is highly overstated to begin with, and then, you have a big bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum, that connects the two hemispheres, so that information can be processed on both sides. On top of that, there are actually two nerves coming from each of your cochleae, sending sound information to each hemisphere. More information goes to the side the ear is on, which helps you locate sounds in space, but even people who are deaf in one ear are processing sound information in both hemispheres.
That said, pretty much everyone has a better ear-- one that performs better on an audiology test. For some people the difference is significant, and for other people it isn’t. For me the difference is slight-- just about five decibels, and I have very good hearing in both ears (I’m 47, and I can hear that whine that adults aren’t supposed to be able to hear), but there’s enough difference in discrimination between my ears that I really prefer to use my better ear on the phone (my left, if you are curious). I even keep my cell phone in my left pocket for that reason. It probably matters that on a phone, there are no visual cues to help with understanding what someone is saying, so using my better ear makes a difference.
At any rate, listening through an ear monitor, or whatever, you’ll probably get the most enjoyment if you use your better ear, but that might not be your best choice at work. Maybe you want to leave your better ear free for environmental sounds, since they will be unpredictable, and the music you know.
Left ear. Which is also the ear the single pad goes on if I’m singing something and using headphones for the backing track, while monitoring myself through open air. No idea why, or whether that makes my ‘better ear’ the one I use for the music or the one I use to gauge my own voice.
Right ear, because I feel I can hear more clearly on that side. It is a bit annoying with some stereo songs, but I tend to just skip over those when I’m in one-earbud mode.
If I can only listen to one channel of a stereo recording, I won’t use it at all. If it’s a mono-recording, I will typically put it in my left ear. Why? I dunno. I just do.
Our unwritten office policy regarding ear buds says it’s fine to wear them, as long as it’s only in one ear. I typically listen to podcasts when I’m at work; since most of these are in mono (or otherwise limited sound quality), I’ll alternate ears. If I don’t alternate, whichever ear is wearing the ear bud gets very itchy after a few hours. I can’t say that I’ve noticed a tremendous difference in hearing ability between the two ears.
If you go to Radio Shack, you can by a splitter, that you can plug in backwards, and then use a female-to-female coupler to plug it into your ear bud, so it’s sending both signals to one earbud-- basically converting mono to stereo. you have to buy a couple of patch cables, but I’ve done it. It was a long time ago.
Oh, heck, you probably don’t have to go to Radio Shack and buy a bunch of stuff anymore. Yup, I just looked, and Amazon.com sells single earbuds that convert stereo to mono, and are designed for just what you are talking about-- situations where you want one ear free for environmental sounds, but your player is stereo.