Judging from the evidence in the story, this is confirmation that our ears are really good at gauging where a sound is coming from in space.

Our eyes are far easier to fool than our ears, at least in certain respects. Our ears can resolve phase (time) information down to seemingly infinitesimal differences between what the right ad left ears perceive.

For an example of the difference in processing speed between ear-brain and eye-brain, think how few frames per second is necessary for us to ”believe” that we are seeing a moving picture, at the movies or on TV. To deliver realistic analog sound, we have to provide a PCM signal sampled at at least 44,000 times a second!

It takes only a fraction of a second for you to become alert to the direction a sound is coming from; there is no consciousness of any delay — you just know where the sound comes from. Eyes take a long time to focus, adjust, etc. So if you’re in a gloomy environment, you depend more on your ears than usual for spacial cues. I think that’s about it.


(I have been in the field of high-performance music playback systems for a very long time, particularly digital systems.