It isn't about speaker distance, it's about distance between ears. I agree that HRTFs are uncommon in mixing, but spatialization without some frequency depende

It isn't about speaker distance, it's about distance between ears. I agree that HRTFs are uncommon in mixing, but spatialization without some frequency dependent attenuation generally sounds "flat" with headphones. Although VR systems and big budget spatialization like Atmos will account for speaker distance (so called near field effects) it's almost impossible to notice those effects for stationary sources and no head-tracking.