system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do earphones produce adequate bass despite their size?
gpt
Proximity to your ear. The volume of air displaced by a large subwoofer is large, but it is many feet / several hundreds of feet away from your ear. If you are too close to something of this size, you will be doing damage to your ears because the volume of sound waves hitting your eardrum is too large.  
  
Similarly, small earbuds produce a bass sound with a very tiny volume, but that earbud is mere millimeters away from your eardrum. Change that even to a few centimeters and the bass sound waves diffuse too quickly for them to affect your eardrum.