Yup, that’s what I was alluding to, while it may not still be the case for transistors, they did manage to take 50 odd years to get there, push that trend line from the figure 50 years heh (not saying you should, 5 seems much more conservative)

Take a look at Nvidias pace wrt Moore’s law (of FLOPS) https://netrouting.com/nvidia-surpassing-moores-law-gpu-innovation/

Or like looking at the early days of semiconductors and extrapolating that CPU speed will double every 18 months …smh these people

I don’t really follow your logic, how else would you propose to shape the audio that is not “just an effect”.

Your analogy to real life does not take into account that the audio source itself is moving, so their is an extra variable outside of just stereo signal -which is what spatial audio is modelling

And your muffling example sounds a bit over simplified maybe? My understanding is that the spatial stuff is produced by phase shifting the LR signals slightly

Finally why not go further? “I don’t listen to speaker audio because it’s all just effects and mirages to sound like a real sound, what only 2^16 discrete positions the diaphragm can be in” :p