RICK FITZPATRICK said:
Sure it is. All the time. Honestly.
The secret is simple (and expensive) - large studios are the most flexible. There are plenty of rooms, mostly on the east and west coasts, that were designed back in the 40's, 50's and 60's, where recording big band jazz, radio orchestras, and film music were the prime directives. Those rooms make excellent places to record rock records, and are used more for that now than what they were desinged for. Examples include Ocean Way, Cello, A&M.
The late Columbia Records 30th street studios in Manhattan were built in an old church, and the dimensions of the room were approx. 100x100x100 (!). Obviously, lots of classical records were done there, but so were all of the Columbia jazz records from to 50's (all of the Mile's Davis small group stuff), as well as all of the early 60's Bob Dylan records, and Simon and Garfunkel records.
The neat thing about working in large rooms, even highly reverberant ones, is that instruments that are close mic'ed sound as though they are in a pretty dead environment, since the Distance Constant is so high. Pulling the mic back away begins to reveal the "room sound".
I know this is pretty academic, since few of us (me included, except for a few occassions) will ever do work in rooms that are that big, but they are out there, and they do work.
You may not be an expert, but you're saying the right stuff - actually, they try to keep it somewhere in the 22ms range, and it's known as the Haas Effect - much longer than that, and the brain starts to hear it as a discreet echo, and much shorter, you begin to hear it is comb filtering. In any case, having those diffuse reflections coming back to you within that time window is thought by some to be preferable.
QUOTE]By the way, supposedly, the brain will integrate any reflection arriving at the ears within 20ms of the direct sound. That is the reasoning. As usual though, there are proponets and opponents of any theory or school of thought. Even LEDE is stated NOT TO WORK by most these days. It seems time, taste, and evolution of technology and science changes everything eventually. Recording is not exempt. Otherwise we would still be recording for MONO. From what I understand, surround 7.1 is just around the corner. Talk about an engineers nightmare.
However, lava lamps negate all discrepencys in the studio.
fitZ [/B][/QUOTE]
Yeah, everyone has their own ideas about what works, and what doesn't. I'm pretty flexible, and in my basment studio, I'm breaking every rule of good control room design (as in, not really having a control room at all). It works for me, it wouldn't work for everyone, and I'm guessing that a whole bunch of people just wouldn't tolerate it. but I'm used to it!
John
I may know some things, but it is by reading only. And I was just trying to help, but it is obvious now that it was a trap. 
Thanks for the clarification. And actually, the ONLY thing I'm an expert at is making a fool of myself. which seems to be every time I open my mouth around here. 
