Best studio sound you've ever heard?

I get high on good sounding rooms. Own experience - Atlantis Studio Stockholm, www.atlantisstudion.se Beautiful room + vintage Neve 80 series. From albums: Brian Adams If you really love a woman, snare room, Burt Baccarach and Elvis Costello album (believe it's Ocean Way) and Vince Gill (Blackbird). But of course can't tell for sure if what I hear on any of the latter are the real rooms.

Sorry, just realised that you probably wanted to discuss control rooms..

If I was awarding my bronze medal, I'd say studio B in Electric Ladyland. I was playing Jimi Hendrix's Marshall, ( after he'd passed, his amp was there for a little while), doing lead guitar overdubs. It wasn't a pretty place or an obviously great room, but there was something about how the guitar pressurized that room that inspired me to play better. Jimi's lingering spirit might've helped a little.

It was either Tom Lord Alge or Eddie Kramer at the board, but I have no idea. To me then, it was just "the engineer", I was always friendly and appreciative, but I paid little attention to techicalities back then, I was only interested in the artists and the music they were making, never gave a second thought to the sound. I just trusted that if they were there, they were good enough for me to get on with it. Further on down the road, that didn't prove to be true, and when I caught both a big time producer and Grammy award winning engineer with their pants down after making an egregious technical error, I began to trust my ears over anyone's.

I'd trust Hugh Padgham though :-)

Dang Matt, you gotta get out more. Do yourself a favor and make it happen, get to some really good studio somehow, you'll never be the same.

Your benchmarks will shift. No wonder I'm always bitching about working in my half assed living room, I've been in rooms where the gods played. Since I've used up my gold, silver, and bronze choices, I'll give an honorable mention the Bell Sound. Torn down a week after I was there, I stood right where Buddy Holly did his NY recordings, a real old school sound room with the booth positioned way overhead like Abbey Road. It felt wonderful.

Todd Garfinkle's MA Recordings label is a great source to test the resolution of your playback system. The best sound is something still reserved for the future, I don't believe it's here yet. I look forward to advancing the science of sound, let's hope designers eventually stop re-inventing the wheels of days gone past and go on to design better tools for the future. We have enough clones of the past.

The Castle in Franklin TN is my pick. I've never heard a record out of that studio that didn't pin my ears.

Favorites I've haunted,,,,,

 - Capitol A is always a fav when I get to work there - and at this point in time with the options available, probably my fav.
 - The Village is/was great as well.
 - Sunset sound.  A classic and I always enjoyed working there.  Still around and kicking last I heard.  Their API was very cool...  I think demedio-ized.
 - The Barbara Streisand scoring stage - on the Sony Studios Lot - is also like taking a step back in time to the 30/40's and going into the bridge of the Star Treck Enterprise 2015 simultaneously. An amazing experience always.  And if appropriate for what you're doing, it's like going to Abbey Road.  Only AMERICAN!
 - Conway.  Studio C I think?  Great place and still there.  Fond memories there including the best pair of M49's I've heard, the wild tropical pathways surrounding it in the heart of Hollyweird, and recording the Buffett crew - steel drums and all -  in there.
So many great studios I used to work at are gone now though,,,,

Places I miss...

 - O'Henry's Studio A with the largest API in the US had flying faders and the A room and was,,,,,oh...my.      Now.....Gone. Sad.   Privatized by a rich trust-funder and not available for public rental.  The B room with the 9000 J was KILLER for surround mixing.
 - Goldstar - not the best sounding perhaps - but undoubtably the most historically rich. The patina in the air of that place reeked of ground breaking artists and #1 hits.  Spector and the wrecking crew's home away from home and like I said the history was just dripping.  I only got to work there a couple of times before they tore it down to put in a gas station I believe....sigh
 - Bill Schnee just sold his studio as well I heard.....  Another huge loss.  Legendary ghosts now haunting studio city with no room to reside in.
 - The Paramount stage on the lot - at least Greg got their console and has it at the Bridge now.
 - The original Ocean Way on sunset. Haven't been there in years. Recorded there with my first Orchestra waaaay back in the day. I think it kind of exists to some degree, but it's different.... The history in that place as well....oy!

There are lots of great new studios, but they all seem to have a lot of the "trial and error and experience and personality of the owner" eeked out of them.  They seem more corporatized if that makes sense - less unique personality. I miss the studio's built in the 70's 80's in LA. What a heyday that was back then.... 
The lesson learned?  If you're going to build a studio - don't put a studio somewhere where the property will become far more valuable than the music and history it will produce.  And THAT;s becoming harder and harder....  LA is certainly precluded at this point.

This is making me sad. But I will divert the energy into building the coolest new studio in AZ Matt.

bp

In the late 60's/early 70's, my group recorded a couple of albums at a Toronto studio called Sound Canada, aka Toronto Sound, which no longer exists. I was 15 or 16, I don't remember much about the equipment other than it was a 2" 16-track recorder we mostly used, mastered to 1/2" 2-track, both Ampex I think. During the same time, the Stampeders were recording "Sweet City Woman", and sometimes the engineer would play it while we were setting up. Wow, the sound of that guitar during the instrumental break was just astonishingly beautiful. So that has always stood out to me as the best sound I've heard in a studio. Our engineer was Graham Nash, though as far as I know not "that" Graham Nash. Sometimes we'd warm up by playing some Hendrix, Cream, and Zep, and Graham couldn't help but join in with vocals.

My second favorite sound was at another Toronto studio called Metalworks. It was started by Triumph, I believe, and Rik Emmett is still one of my musical heroes.

The Castle is very good but Dave Martin's Java Jive is right up there with it. The Nashville studio that left me exclaiming OMG was the Neve room at Quad. Norbert Putnum knew what it was but I don't think most nashvillians realized what an incredible room they had there. RIP.

Take me back to paradise city.. m
Well at least the legends say the inspiration for the song, Sound Summit / MusicHead, The studio at Lake Geneva's Playboy Club It was the first "real" studio I spent time at, and I spent most of a summers evenings hanging learning helping. It's where I feel for the Sound of a Neve Pre and the magic of a M49.

There was something awesome about the A -Range at Smart, B&W 808s always impressed me, but the room at Smart wasn't WOW!
There was a Guy in Madison named John Matchnik, he had a low end basement room called Sleepless Nights,
To this day He had the best Drumsound I have heard.

Live well give me a Midas and Meyers and I'm a happy camper.

I've played on a bunch of sessions at Avatar and that place still wows me. The sound in Studio A (The beaver dam) is amazing.

I've also done some session work on some large scale orchestral recordings there (which is pretty much one of the last, if not the last place to do large scale recordings like that in NYC) and that room alone blows me away for orchestral stuff. Even when the orchestra is warming up, it already sounds like a record. I was joking with the engineer on one session about how it sounds like it's easy to record an orchestra in there because it sounds like you can just throw some mics up and you're done and he was like, "No - you're absolutely right. We throw up a lot of spots but we mostly just use the room mics". No nasty resonances, no ringing, nothing. Just massive clarity in the orchestra and it all just sounded sweeter.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

I do a lot of session work in most of the studios in NYC and they're all good sounding (what remains of the good studios that is, not the home ones!) but Avatar just stands out to me as being exceptional. I feel like if you could just take some young cats and stick them in that room and let them hear what it sounds like, maybe they'd finally understand why the room is such an important part of recording.

I need a two Thumbs Up icon for that post ionian!

That same video game/lounge around on cell phone generation is a curiosity. They're certainly less involved with music. And certainly, the little white ear buds aren't doing much toward changing that.We need to get to where everyday listening is through at least a high res file.