I never heard of aphantasia before but having read a bit about it, doesn't seem to be the same thing. When I "see" things mentally it's not like it "takes over"

I never heard of aphantasia before but having read a bit about it, doesn't seem to be the same thing. When I "see" things mentally it's not like it "takes over" my visual input, nor it has weight in the real world. The image seems to be "nowhere", like when dreaming. Closing my eyes doesn't really make the image clearer by itself, it's more like there's no visual input to interrupt my visualization and that's what makes it "clearer". If I mentally listen to music it's clearly not coming from my ears (in fact the whole concept of sound direction doesn't seem to exist when I imagine sound. No stereo separation either.) I find this whole stuff fascinating though. I wish there was some way to measure and/or capture those images/sounds and make them physical data, even if once captured it turns out to be a lot less detailed than what it seems. It'd be a security nightmare though!