How Tiny Earbuds FAKE Bass You Only Imagine

Tiny earbuds are far too small to play deep bass. Yet you swear you hear it. Your brain fills in a note that was never played.

How can a driver the size of a pea produce a bass note it cannot physically make?

A musical bass note is not one frequency. It is a fundamental tone plus a stack of higher tones, called harmonics, spaced in a neat repeating pattern. Big speakers can pump out that low fundamental. A tiny earbud usually cannot, but it can easily play the harmonics above it. Here is the trick: your brain recognizes that evenly spaced pattern and works out which fundamental it belongs to. So even when the lowest note is missing, your brain reconstructs its pitch and lets you hear the bass anyway. Scientists call it the missing fundamental.

Here's the twist: that bass is not coming from your earbuds. It is generated inside your own head. The note you feel thumping was never in the air at all.

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