As a newbie, I guess I haven't earned the right to contradict anyone, particularly long-established members.....but ouch, sounds like an awful lot of people are wasting an awful lot of money. Of course, it helps to clarify whether you're talking about tracking or mixing/mastering, but even with tracking, digital or analog, I believe that room reflections from an untreated room would be picked up if the source was a microphone.

Respectfully,
Charles