[Zuman]

Ok, this is a slightly bizarre topic for this circle, but be patient with me here...
Like many of you, I've chased great sound for several decades. In my case, it's been at least 40 years, and I've been through every (ahem) phase of audiophilia that's emerged during those years.  But as I was puttering around this past week, moving my speaker stands another inch out into the room, moving the curtains behind them, and toeing them in another couple of degrees, I flashed back to something I bought for my father back in the 1980s when he was beginning to have a bit of trouble with increasing deafness.
They were little flaps, somewhat cupped, that attached to the back of ones ears, and they were marketed to audiophiles. I'm sure I read about them in Stereophile or The Absolute Sound, because there wasn't an internet. Customers were encouraged, I believe, to wear them to live concerts and to listen to their home systems. I'm not certain, but I think they were made out of leather or some kind of faux leather.
Here's the thing: they absolutely and indisputably changed the sound of whatever one was listening to, just as cupping one's hands behind ones ears changes pretty much everything about our perception of sounds.
So what's bothering me is that my external ears are probably a good half-inch longer from top-to-bottom than my wife's, and perhaps the same amount larger from front to back.  Also, her ears are less cupped than mine.
So is there any chance whatsoever that she's hearing things the same way as I am? And when you put a bunch of audiophiles in a room to listen to a system demo, are there some people for whom the system and acoustic treatment are optimized, while it just misses the mark for others just because of something as basic as the physical shape of their ears?
I know that I have significant HF attenuation in my hearing now I've hit 70, but I still love listening to high-fidelity music. It's just that I think that in order to satisfy myself to the highest degree possible, I may have to accept that I have to listen alone...because the closer I get to audio perfection for me, the further away I may get for everyone else.
We spend untold amounts of money on subtleties in this hobby, and often become frustrated when others don't hear what we do. Maybe that's just too much to expect.

[Letitroll98]

I think there's a lot more between the ears that dissuades women from liking hifi than in the ear itself.  But you're correct about ear shape affecting perceived sound.  I remember an article detailing how even with headphones the shape and size of the external ear structure affected hearing.  Think if you had the ears of a bat they'd be bigger than your head. 

[Mag]

   Well I think for sure the shape of ones ears determines to some degree how people hear something perhaps slightly different than someone else. The cupped ear thing proves that, but listening is more so a mental process. Some musician are well trained at identifying notes etc..

Women I believe listen emotionally as opposed to men. That is why there are fewer women audiophiles because they are getting a different kind of music fix than men and don't necessarily need hi fidelity playback.

[mresseguie]

Zuman,

Good food for thought! I may have to try something like this just to see how it affects my listening experience. [Let's call it a tweak.] My wife's ears are considerably smaller than mine. Even her ear openings are smaller than average - most earbuds are too large for her to insert into the ear canal.

Michael

[charmerci]

Nah. My example is a male friend who loves music and is a part-time DJ. Always searching and looking for new music, his preference being prog rock. Listens to cassettes in his old vehicle. I sat him down at my stereo with one of my best sounding recording, a female singer with minimal musical backing. She and her small group almost sounded like they were in the room. He couldn't care less. Didn't like the music nor was interested in hearing other great sounding recordings.

[jonbee]

Sennheiser has done research on the ways different ear shapes affect perception of directionality and other spatial and tonal perception. They can produce startling changes in the listeners' perception of sounds by manipulating these variables, making front sources sound like rear, left becoming right, etc. Since their phones fire directly into the ear these seriouly affect the perceived quality of the phones, which they try to work around.
Of course our brains use this raw "data" fed by our ears to build a map of the soundfield, which is the locus of our experience.  I think this is a big reason audiophiles often can't agree on which transducers are "best", because our judgements are only in the context of our personal mapping. Like many things in the brain, however, these maps are changeable with experience.

[JLM]

Shape of the ear, loudspeaker, and room all make a difference.