Headphone and loudspeaker playback of stereo differ yet yield similar spatial order.

Evidence

With amplitude-panned virtual sources the level difference between headphone channels is converteddirectlyintoanILD,andtheITDremainszero.Thisisverydifferentfromloudspeaker listening, where the direction of the amplitude-panned sources is implied by ITD cues with the ILDatzeroforlowfrequencies.Althoughthisappearstobeapotentialsourceoflargedifferences in spatial perception of the resulting virtual sources, the resulting spatial image is similar. The virtual sources are perceived in about the same order in the left–right direction as in loudspeaker listening. However, in headphone listening, the sources are perceived inside the listener’s head due to erroneous monaural spectra and a lack of dynamic cues, as explained previously. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1935

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does stereo spatial order survive the ILD/ITD cue transformation between formats? Worth tracing the perceptual mechanism.