Dear all, please listen to this if you haven’t- it will definitely change the way you think about sound, headphones are needed and yes it really is an experience. I first heard this ‘Virtual 3D’ use of sound around five years ago and haven’t gotten over how amazing it is.
The way the artists uses the microphone as a form of stimulation is amazing but what is more entertaining is how our perceptions and brain functioning do the rest. The use of two microphones to represent left and right create this three dimensional effect partly why this simulation only works with headphones.
They way we can tell the proximity he is to the microphone is because our brain forms cues or rather calculations in the difference of sound intensity. This is called the ‘cetera algorithm’  There’s a lot more complexity in this process and the functions our brain does to process this sound so I suggest you have a look into what the cetera algorithm is, until next time.

“The Cetera technology applies the lessons of virtual audio to advance the state-of-the-art in hearing aids. The sound difference can be as significant as comparing a one-dimensional visual image to 3-D,” – Jerry Ruzicka, president, Starkey Labs.