venta

The hearing thing sounds a little odd. Directional hearing has no effect on the volume, as far as I know. The best explanation I can come up with is that of constructive/destructive interference pattern being set up. If the sound was reflecting off a surface (or if there was more than one source of sound - just two loudspeakers would be sufficient) this sets up an interference pattern. At the 'nodes' of the pattern, the sound cancels out, so you hardly hear anything - and at the 'antinodes' you get the constructive intereference resulting in a very loud noise (at 4 times the usual volume of one source of sound). It can often be the case that the pattern spaceing can be of the order of a foot or so, so moving your head slightly can change your ears from a node to an antinode, resulting in the effect you heard. Try walking around a room with a stereo sound system (playing in mono) sometime, and notice the change in sound as you walk around the room.

My cryptic crossword of choice is the Metro crossword.