The ability to distinguish direction from a sound is based on the human ear frequency response being very directional. Your left ear will hear a sound coming fr

The ability to distinguish direction from a sound is based on the human ear frequency response being very directional. Your left ear will hear a sound coming from the right very differently than from the left. This is predominantly because of the shape of your ear and your head being in the way. There's no way humans can tell the time difference of about 50 microseconds between hearing with your left and right ears. If you have research to prove otherwise, I'm all ears (pun intended). You can also easily tell the difference of sound coming from directly ahead vs behind despite the ears hearing the sound simultaneously. There is a lot of research into psychoacoustics in the past few decades. And pretty cool demos where directional audio is generated on headphones by altering the frequency spectrum between left and right ears.