No matter what you use to create the sound you are only sensing what happens at your two ears - so if headphones could faithfully recreate what you would hear from any number of speakers you could recreate the experience. HRTF and other computational methods try to do that with various levels of success
WittyUname t1_jean2pd wrote
Reply to How can headphones play Dolby Atmos? by Beneficial-Health101
No matter what you use to create the sound you are only sensing what happens at your two ears - so if headphones could faithfully recreate what you would hear from any number of speakers you could recreate the experience. HRTF and other computational methods try to do that with various levels of success