What makes a good sounding room?

[RandomHero]

Hey guys, i thought we should get a good discussion about this, as I'm sure there are a bunch of opinions on this.

Also, what characteristics does a great room have?

Personally, I do like the natural reverb in my recordings, and my room is adapted for that.

What floats your boats?

 

[ibleedburgundy]

Make it shaped like this:

 

[ibleedburgundy]

BTW that's the Strathmore concert hall in Bethesda Maryland. Everything sounds incredible in there. The room actually gets larger in every dimension as you get further away from the stage. There are no paralllel walls. The ceiling is one giant diffusor. The walls alternate traps and wood. The doors are supremely heavy. There is lots of wood but not so much that the room over colors everything. I've been in a concert hall where I heard 20 different classical guitarists play and they all appeared to have the same tone because the room was dominating too much.

 

[miroslav]

And then at the opposite end of the pool...

...there were rooms like Sun Studios and Motown's Hitsville USA that were just basic rooms and converted basements, and yet, managed to capture some great sounds.

 

[arcadeko]

What makes a good sounding room?

I think the key is to have great musicians!

 

[mixsit]

...Personally, I do like the natural reverb in my recordings, and my room is adapted for that. ...

I wish I had some more space-

Enough distance so that the reflections are interesting for one.
Lots of home recorders here, and (often) we're dealing with rather smallish rooms.
I have a notion that it's nice to have the reflections out side of the Haas zone.
For the most part with small rooms it seem it's control the reflections , still use as much mic distance as you can, then rebuild' with the ambient you pick for the track.
For the most part that works quite well and 'controlled is called for a building block in many cases.
When we do five acoustic instruments and bass in my fairly controlled 15 or so foot room I can get fair tracks ok, but a) it's too many too close and the room (and track) seems overloaded' ('congestion not distortion), and b) it's just not as fun nor natural as playing where the sound has somewhere to go, and/or reflect. Space and space.