Yes. That random android tablet with the atmos logo on it definitely does some totally real processing to actually improve the audio coming out of its lil tinny speakers.

If you have a stereo headset, the absolute best audio signal you can feed them, is stereo. Any and all spatial processing can and should already be in there, because no, you can’t just “process” it in there afterwards.

Games and movies that support complex audio standards only work right when used on multi-speaker setups. You can’t just “process” it down to a stereo signal in a way that recreates that. At best, the result is as good as a correctly created stereo signal would have been in the first place.

We’re talking about stereo headphones here. Feeding them anything other than a stereo audio signal was never an option. No matter what processing you do, it’s still just two speakers slapped onto your ears. If you have a stereo audio source that didn’t generate the signal with spatial processing, you can’t just add it back in. And if it did create the signal with spatial audio, no additional processing makes it more better.