How big of a live room do I need for vox/guits to not sound "boxy"

[guittarzzan]

If the deal goes through, the house I'll be buying, has a 17x17' room I'll use for my music production.

I don't need to track drums there and really just want a live room large enough to track guits and vox.

What's the smallest I could get away with and not have the guits sound "boxy" if I wanted to use close and distant mic's? I realize I'm not going to have a big room sound, but I'd like to have enough to play with to add some depth to the close mics etc.

What are your thoughts...talk amongst yourselves.

thanks guys,
Steve

[Ethan Winer]

Distant microphones will always pick up the sound of the room, so then the question is more "How far away can I get before it sounds boxy?" The answer depends on how much room treatment you have. The more tame you can make the room, the farther away you can be.

But you don't have to use distant microphones at all. Adding a 10 millisecond delay plus some reverb can simulate that, using the clean close-mic'd signal as the source. Or use a reverb plug-in that offers an "early reflections" adjustment.

--Ethan

[Sen]

how high is the ceiling and is it parallel to the floor? If not parallel it's a plus, not a big one (considering the sahpe of your room), but better than parallel. Then you could place some panels on side walls to try and brake up the parallel wall surfaces, even some diffusion by gluing random pieces of wood onto a 3mm thick panel and hanging on the walls....Otherwise, what Ethan said, make it as dead as you can, making sure the absorption is spread over the whole frequency range (bass traps etc) and worry about ambience in the mix.
good luck