Indeed. Perceptual evaluation is ***ALL*** in this regard.
I’ve heard arguments about ‘accuracy’ and ‘measurement’ but there are only two rules I think are important.
The first is “never, EVER, break the illusion”
The second is “don’t require separate mixing and production for each format”.
I suppose a third rule of the inquisition two is “You must be able to mix house mikes, spot mikes, directs, etc, all convincingly” but that does actually come into Rule #1.
As to “description” that is totally inside each and every engine. R theta phi (distance angle elevation) and XYX (position in relative space) both work. When you’re doing anything involving motion (either listener head motion or source motion) smoothing and absolute lack of palpable filtering and/or glitching are required. But that goes right back again to rule 1, which is DO NOT BREAK THE ILLUSION.