I'm not sure what is surprising about this.
Right, no one here seems to be!
When you are in a given space, things that are close to you sound .....close and things that are far, sound ....far.
At the same time.
What is the issue?
The issue is that nobody gets the point of my question.
We routinely accept, say, a singer in a vocal booth, a snare in a huge stairwell (if you're Paul Simon), a mic up the bass drum's butt, strings in a hall, horns in a medium-sized studio, power chords panned hard left and right, background singers in the background, and a partridge in a pear tree.
So I call Mike for a good time this is what I get:
"It depends on what "accepts" means. Does that mean that they like it,
they find that it enhances whatever feeling the music provokes in them,
or they don't care or don't notice anything odd?"
It means that we don't think twice about it - as long as it's done well, of course. Well, and hopefully that it does enhance the music.
I'll find some examples and post links.