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Well, yes, but ....


If you're talking about differential delay in the same soundstage, the numbers are going to be rather larger than 6 microseconds.

That's because a delay in one channel would move everything back and forth, and pretty much keep the same relative angle between the two sources. Not quite, but close (due to the perceptual issues, not the analytic ones).

Now, if the delay varies with frequency, the question is more if the sounds are far enough dispersed to not fit into one "auditory object". This is a hard problem, but in general 15 degrees per critical band seems to be an ok kind of time delay once you get above about 1kHz. The atmosphere is also dispersive, and we seem to have learned to ignore such dispersion to a great extent.

Now, if the difference in delay changes with frequency DIFFERENTLY in the two channels, one might get some problems or shifts in imaging, but again, 5-6 microseconds is going to be a pretty hard lower bound (think "detection level of leading edge of signal envelope vs. absolute threshold"). There isn't as much data on this, but what does exist suggests that the 5-6 microsecond number is pretty hard.

What's more, if your ear can "merge" the various components into one object, you will not notice a LOT of differential delay across frequency. That depends on the kind of signal, and will vary strongly for signals with different short-term spectra.

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