[ggegan]

I personally am not a fan of ITU speaker placement. It does not conform to any real world speaker configuration I have ever seen, either in movie theaters or home theaters. I don't know of any venue where all the speakers are equidistant from the listener. There is an additional issue with ITU where noise-like sounds such as rain, waves or traffic roar which are panned simultaneously to the front and surround speakers can exhibit an acoustic phasing effect with slight movements of ones head due to minute variations in the arrival time of the sound from the various speakers. I find it is nearly impossible to perfectly time align the speakers so that you avoid this issue with near field speaker systems that are equidistantly placed unless your head is locked in a vice in the perfect position. In near field mix rooms I generally put a 10 to 15 msec delay in my surrounds if they are close to equidistant to the front speakers in order to avoid acoustic phasing and more accurately replicate what I am used to hearing on a large dub stage.