Can I make professional sounding recording with Logic in an untreated room?

Question

I have a small bedroom-recording studio. Since starting with Logic over a year ago I have been amazed at how much you can really do with this program. I would really like to start producing my songs at level that competes with the sound quality of what most people purchase on Itunes and professional albums. However, I don't have the space or money to record and mix in an acoustically treated room. It's my little 10x12 bedroom in California after all, and I also have to keep everything else I own in the same space.
Some people argue that an acoustically treated room is the most important thing in getting a truly great sounding record, BUT my question/argument is that IT IS possible to get a pro recording without elaborate foam set-ups and bass traps, etc. Here are my thoughts and please feel free to agree or disagree and prove me wrong—also note, I am NOT talking about mastering, just getting quality recordings and mixes before the mastering stage (that I would pay a pro to take care of anyway).
I have good monitors for my setup (Event ASP6s and have had a few professional recording artists I know comment on how good they sound). I listen to music all the time on these speakers and know them very well. When I record my own music I frequently A/B my recordings (as I am recording AND mixing) with music from CDs to match the sound quality. I focus on both total recordings and specific instruments when doing this A/B strategy. I also mix at low volume levels.
My thinking is this: If I'm able match (or at least come close to matching) the sound of my instruments and mixes to a commercial recording using my speakers and Logic, then the room should not matter. The speakers are reflecting the sound of a pro recording, regardless of how the room is treated, and I am in turn emulating this sound with my own music. Thus, my music should translate well on other systems, as the pro recordings obviously would do so.
I realize that quality mics, preamps, mixing skills etc. are important for creating a professional, accurate sounding project as well, but the fact that I am unable to record in a properly treated room has always bothered me and I’m not going to be able to change this situation any time soon.
I’m curious about everyone’s opinion on this. This is a great forum and there are a lot of knowledgeable people here. This is the age of the “Home Studio” and most people with home studios don’t have quality rooms, so this is an important subject. Thanks for any feedback.

Answer 1

Jack, I'm in a similar boat here in Seattle. I just finished recording and mixing a few songs for demo'ing purposes and was pretty happy with what I achieved, but let's just say there was a lot of learning involved with the process.
In my limited experience, when you're working in a small untreated boxy room, you're fighting a different big problem at each stage of the recording process. When you're recording, you have to deal with comb filtering and flutter echoes (if you're recording mic'd acoustic instruments), and when mixing room modes and bass-response issues. There are various ways of addressing flutter echo, which boil down to creatively using dispersion and absorption techniques and playing around with mic placement. If you close-mic everything, you can get rid of some but not all flutter problems, but then you have to wrestle with having an exaggerated low end on all of your tracks, and you lose a lot of the open, airy quality of the instruments you're recording.
My "studio" has a couple of large bookcases along one wall, so I typically recorded the guitar in M-S stereo facing the bookcases (to get some dispersion) and set up a couple of homebrewed O-C 703 panels a few feet to each side to kill off the echoes. I also set a panel up on the wall behind me to further dampen things. It seemed to work pretty well. Mixing was a whole 'nother matter. No matter how much I A/B'd I did a bunch of mixes that wound up sounding truly awful when trialled on other systems. I went through a lot of CD-R's before finally winding up with something that wasn't actively cringeworthy (at least in terms of audio quality).
Since your setup is based on an MBP and a portable FW interface, one thing you might try is recording acoustic instruments in a larger room elsewhere in your apartment, or maybe at a friend's. Or maybe rent / borrow a church for a day.
Hope this helps,
Trent