After several months, Howard discovered many ways to compensate for his hearing loss on one side [ear]. […] “I no longer had to close my eyes if I kept scanning the scene by moving my head in a side-to-side motion, with a very slight up-and-down wave motion.”
Composer, ethnomusicologist and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Larnier is concerned with designing virtual reality with the greatest possible visual and auditory fidelity. He stresses that micro-movements of the head (movements of a few millimetres, or tiny rotations), performed automatically and unconsciously in fractions of a second, occur even in those with perfect binaural hearing and are, indeed, necessary for precise sound location.
– Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (neurologist, author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat)