Pinna

The pinna is the visible part of the ear that resides outside of the head. We often use the pinna, which is also called the auricle, for hanging earrings and resting eyeglasses, but the evolutionary purpose of the pinna is to collect sound. It does so by acting as a funnel, amplifying the sound and directing it to the ear canal. While reflecting from the pinna, sound also goes through a filtering process which adds directional information to the sound (see sound localization, head-related transfer function, pinna notch). Notably, the filtering of the human pinna also selects for sounds in the frequency range of human speech.

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Ear: : For an alternative meanings, see ear (disambiguation)....

Sound localization: Sound localization is a listener's ability to identify the location of origin of a detected sound or the methods in acoustical engineering to simulate the placement of an auditory cue in a virtual 3D space (see binaural recording)....

Head-related transfer function: The head-related transfer function HRTF, more recently termed the anatomical transfer function ATF, describes how a given sound wave input (parameterized as frequency and source location) is filtered by the diffraction and reflection properties of the head, pinna, and torso, before the sound reaches...