Hi SirQuack,
Bridgman has more or less replied for me (thanks, John). Randy, you've either misunderstood what I was saying or perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I didn't say it was "misguided" to treat studio control rooms; I said it was impossible to eliminate crosstalk between channels when you listen to stereo using loudspeakers. The only way to take the room out of the equation is to listen with headphones.
For control room monitoring, I agree that you do not want a lot of spurious reflections that may cause the recording engineer to misinterpret what he's doing with the mix.
But as Bridgman pointed out, a living room with a mix of some reflective surfaces and some absorbency is generally desirable for the reasons I've outlined, which are reinforced by many years of listening tests and measurements of speakers in different playback environments.
By all means use bass traps to tame the room modes if necessary (I didn't comment on using EQ) but there is a very large industry out there, along with plenty of "consultants" whose vested interest is in getting consumers to purchase room-treatment products or services, the assumption being that every normally furnished room is somehow inadequate or deeply flawed for enjoyable stereo, multichannel music, or Dolby 5.1 soundtrack playback.
