Lurker now posting finally. I'm an optometrist and I had a long conversation many years ago with a professor of ocular physiology. He taught our "psychophysics of monocular and binocular vision" in Philadelphia. He was also an audiophile. I told him I preferred to listen to music in a pitch black room and eyes open, and he agreed that was probably preferred. The reason being the proprioceptive ability of the brain to know EXACTLY where the eyes are pointed. It is not so easy with eyes closed to "look at something." So his feeling, and I tend to agree, is that with eyes open in a dark room you are able to physically place the performers and instruments in a room due to the positional feedback from the eyes. I have had this discussion with more than one engineer from McIntosh Labs (a few miles from my office) and they are engineers, they really have no opinion. So there's that. I don't think there's a right answer.
