Ahh... thank you, Will. I'm so sorry I didn't realise you were joking, mate!
What you're saying, if you'll forgive the pun, strikes a chord with me, 'cause I've often wondered about the fact that conventional panning simply employs volume differences and lacks the "true" time-arrival differences one's brain would normally use to determine directionality. Hard-left-and-right panning is the obvious exception. Great to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Also, I've banged on here many times (too many, really) about how the brain "fills in gaps" such as in the case of adding fundamentals to harmonics, allowing the perception of bass through bandwidth-restricted, "tiny" speakers and "plays" with audio (and visual) data "for fun", so the filling-in-the-gaps thing makes perfect sense to me too. Talk about a powerhouse CPU.
Again, thank you so much, man. I've been on a very-long, "forced" break from recording and mixing, and I'm stoked to be able to take this stuff onboard before the resumption of proceedings; I can only hope that this tidbit helps to elevate my lowly efforts to something a little-less lowly.