Surround sound information gets lost (downmixed to stereo) on Android without a system-wide surround virtualizer like Dolby Atmos for Headphones or Sony 360 Reality Audio,
or HDMI output for TV/Home theater, all of which most devices/people just don’t have.
So it would be nice to have OpenAL Soft (the FOSS, multi-platform, active, community continuation which now even provides Android binaries)
That’d allow using its built-in HRTF (3D audio spatializer) to hear virtual speaker surround (or maybe even object-based audio like Atmos/DTS if a decoder’s eventually added) when using headphones
Basically, it’s hearing the rear speakers behind you, while front speakers are hear convincingly in front.
We can already virtualize surround sound on Windows via HeSuVi or DSOAL (which wraps DirectSound to OpenAL Soft though there’s a few bugs).