system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does audio do that thing where you can only hear it on one side of your headphones?

Obviously, something different has to be done to make it so certain parts of a song or something can only be heard through one side of your headphones/earbuds, but how do they do that?
gpt
Think of a stereo recording as two separate recordings. For a sound to be in the middle of the headphones, both recordings are playing at the same volume. For a sound to be all the way over to one side, it's playing on one recording and absent on the other recording. For a sound to be just *somewhere* off to the side, it's playing louder on that side than on the other side.