millercarbon6,538 posts11-15-2020 3:30amExact measurements become irrelevant when you don't have a bilaterally symetrical room.
What? Since when? Exact measurements become irrelevant when you are deaf in one ear. As long as you have two working ears its the distance between them and the speakers that determines imaging. That's why we have two ears. Two eyes, depth perception. Two ears, localization. If you can't localize the predator then guess what? Hey, you! Out of the gene pool!
Localization occurs both from timing, relative volume, and spectral content which is related to timing and volume. In the present embodiment of stereo with loudspeakers, timing information is often not well communicated due to lack of shading of the ear from the opposite speaker.
Then we get into the recording, which assuming a stereo recording, may contain only level differences, or level and timing differences depending on the microphone arrangement. Of course, often what we are listening to was recorded monaural and then placed stereo during processing.
So yes, that poster was mostly right in saying that exact measurement becomes irrelevant when you don't have a symmetrical room. You can't address timing and ignore volume or vice versa.