Peter,
The overlap is 800-2500/3000 Hz range, right were most crossover are located.
Ear dominance: both ears are not equal in hearing ability, and both pathways don't interpret the sounds, one side pathway is dominant!
Reflections: don't forget the complex reflections in the local level ....the pinna (ear lobe) upper chest, and head transfer functions. Everyone's pinna is unique and therefore the hearing. Ears like reflections, even order harmonics help too! People get disoriented in anechoic chambers because the lack of reflection limits localization and orientation.
Background noise ..... no matter how low the noise level is in the body has internal noise. The heavy beating of the heart one become alerted to "only" in frightening situations .... but is present all the time.... but our brain ignores it.
Mani:
devil is in the details. First partly psychological since one will never critically listen to the radio. Radio is also playing at a lower level. Less details, less for the ears to be alerted to. Also radio is mono, so no stereo localization.
Oh forgot: almost all songs played on radio are tweaked for such a system "radio edit". No need to elaborate
Edit: Re- reflections
Human ears are reliant on reflections for a lot of things, behind in the subconscious mind, the brain has already oriented "one" to the dimensions of the room. When one speaks, or some noise, the sound is spread all around, and reflections are recorded and analyzed for location and orientation. Mind you this takes an instant. After than the brain is "constantly" checking for this .... so reflections are in fact "not" distortions as commonly conceived but crucial part of the human psychoacoustics .... so when a noise arrives it will be checked for its position, and if it does not contain some of the parameters of the listening/event space, the first part of authentication fails. Beaming speakers will fail, and fail miserably because the listening space is infinitely small and any head movement caused the sound stage to shatter. On the other hand too wide a dispersion, as my prior Omni, will cause loss of detail. Also Omnis can't handle transients.
Dynamically Controlled reflection are the next frontier in HiFi
Best,
VJ
From Mt. Wilson - the highest point in Los Angeles.