That's the problem APL is attempting to solve with their Virtuoso software.

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2026

There is that paper from Griesinger (the Lexicon legend) where he talks about hrtfs and directional sound perception and stuff like that.
He sais that all out of the box systems are doomed to fail. His experiments showed it would be possible though. By not just measuring ear dimensions and head, but also the ear canal in a complex 3d model. the paper sais with all measurements done right and proper algorithmic translation of the material fed to the headphones real out of head and surround experience is possible.
I'd kill to hear a system like that once. But even if a company would offer a service like that, I would think its a scam with some woodoo done on your ears and giving you a razer gaming headset in a fancy box

 

Nah, 9ty is right. Patching signals to each ear directly is not "stereo listening". Its more lilke dual mono
If you happen to have a free standing absorber baffle around you can test that with speakers.
Listen to speakers in a near fiels like you would normally, then place the absorber between the speakers beginning from you nose.
Now left ear hears very little of right speaker and vice versa.
This is gonna be a drastic change in perception and because we are not used to that as much as we're used to headphones it is quite eerie.

 

I see your point and agree to some degree, I like to think that ears don't really listen to anything. It's our brain that decode the info provided and it's easy to fake our brain, Doppler effect is a common example.

 

I can see your point, too. Especially the part with the brain ... as I said, that's the main reason I definitely prefer mixing on monitors the vast majority of time. With headphones I believe too much decoding seems to be going on, at least for my brain. My brain is definitely more used to listening to environments (on the street, in rooms, in the studio, in cafés etc), everything feels more natural. Listening on loudspeakers is so much more fluid, more natural. Sound and perception listening on headphones is way more static, because when listening to sounds in a room, every little move of your head changes perception. It's physics - physics we are very used to.

Don't get me wrong, obviously there are people out there mixing on headphones most of the time. Based on opinions I read, many of them feel like frequency response emulations of rooms is helping them - which is totally fine and understandable. Personally I don't know a single person in real life who mixes more than occasionally while using mainly headphones.

 

100% agree, we born with ears not headphones. That said, the widest stereo field is easy to recreate on headphones faking our brain, just play a sine wave on one side a flip phase to the other side. That is the problem with headphones, it's so unrealistic and unnatural but still very wide.

Nothing can compare the experience of listening directly with our ears, it's immersive, wonderful and so natural.

To push the discussion a bit further, even high end loudspeakers can be considered a kind of headphones but bigger, stronger and less closed to our ears. The reproduction of a recorded voice or instrument, at today, will never compare to the real one listened live.

 

Well...About 30 years ago I thought that I might buy a mid priced Rotel amplifier and so found a dealer close to where I was in L.A. so that I could audition it before buying. It was a very fancy place and I was offered something to drink the moment I entered the joint. The salesman brought me an expresso (with a but of lemon rind on the saucer) in a very nice Italian designed cup and asked me to follow him into the listening room which was large with a big old leather couch. I sat down in the center and asked me to close my eyes. I did so and out of the two perhaps six foot speakers came the sound of Ella Fitzgerald and a trio playing something or other. I was awestruck because I could make out exactly where everybody in the recording was standing. The room was directly in front of me and I could actually visualize it. I heard the stand-up bass player's pants brush against his instrument and it kinda freaked me out because at that moment to me I thought that it couldn't sound that good, that real if I was actually there. I don't know who the salesman thought I was, but I had like $600 in cash on me. lol.

I can without a doubt say that what I heard compared most fabulously to the real thing listened to live. It was as if Ella and her band had given me a private concert. Damn!!