system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5 how headphones with 40mm drivers reproduce low bass notes convincingly, but it takes a very large loudspeaker driver to reproduce bass notes?
gpt
Volume, essentially. Amplitude captured by microphones and processed through digital audio equipment is very, very low. Anything that processes and produces sound captured on a microphone uses a series of amplifiers that add gain to a signal to boost it to audible volumes. The raw signal is very, very quiet.

Producing volume takes energy. To produce a bass note at high volume takes a lot of air movement through a pumped large speaker. At the level of your ear, with a speaker directly inside your ear drum, far less energy is required because you can pick up far quieter volumes from that proximity.

In essence, the nite’s frequency is the easy part, producing it at an audible volume is the part that requires large speakers and energy.