Welcome to Titan Recording Studio. My name is Scot Michael.  I am the owner and a professional Audio Engineer with nearly 10 years of experience as a pro-engineer. Titan Recording Studio is a home based studio in northern Seattle Washington. I started Titan Recording Studio in Washington back in 2003, in a two-story house while working at Binary Recording Studio for Bob Ridgley, then moved to Lake City in Seattle, and am currently located in Shoreline, Washington near Guitarville. I started Titan Recording Studio after graduating with a degree from Full Sail's Audio Engineering program in Orlando, Florida, and after moving on to work at larger, more established studios in different parts of the country. I quickly learned the "In's and Out's" of a professional studio environment and their pro's and con's.

The studio is built in the lower section of my house, and is extremely comfortable and unintimidating, being located in a secluded and scenic area of Shoreline. Some great local bands have recorded with me here, such as "A Gun That Shoots Knives", "The Resets", and many others. The one thing I have realized is that they accomplish so much more when they do not feel like they are recording in an over-professionalized environment designed like a Starbucks! So we have a 14x14 square foot drum booth, a spacious live room, two isolated amp rooms, an excellent Control Room and plenty of space to deal with most recording situations.

As I was working on sessions with musicians who barely had enough money to pay for these expensive studios, I found myself staring at racks upon racks of expensive vintage and modern gear that we barely even used. We hung out in lounges with HD-TV's, expensive leather couches and sometimes even a whole kitchen at the client's disposal. These amenities and extra equipment, that weren't even being used for making and recording music, had to be paid for, and who better than some poor, down on their luck suckers nobody knows, trying there very best just to get themselves heard. I thought to myself, "Why can't we just give them what they need to get the job done and charge them less money". The last straw was when a studio owner asked me to keep a band that was in to record that day working for a while longer, so we could meet our quota. My frustrations with the industry led me to go it alone.
However, before I got started I did a great deal of research on equipment that would be best suited for me to be able to not only record, mix and master my client's projects, but to be able to do it with the same fidelity as some of the more expensive studios.

To start with I will tell you what we do not have. We do not have a lounge with nice furniture, or an insane amount of expensive and trendy gear that we never use. We do not have overpriced Aurelex foam all over the place, nor do we need it, no track-lighting, no funky interior design work. Nope, none of that! Here's what we do have:

Isolation rooms for amps and drums, a spacious Live Room and a comfortable Control Room.
We have great Near-field monitors for playback, mixing and mastering. Great preamps and converters, a great collection of plug-ins and recording software.
The mics I chose to acquire are just what we need to work with anything that comes our way, and they sound phenomenal, no more, no less.

Now don't get me wrong, the equipment we have obtained is not cheap, it is just not overpriced nor outdated and pointless to have. All my research was about "bang for your buck" gear.
Someone reading this might think, "Well, what about analog gear". Yes, this is a digital studio. We have tube gear, but no tape. My belief is that Digital is faster and more efficient. It is the standard currently and can only get better. A lot of studios have both. That is nice I guess, but yet again pointless and adds to the expense of recording and mastering. No band can walk into a fully analog studio and walk out in six hours with a fully mixed and mastered demo of six (6) or more songs (at least not a decent sounding one). We have that capability here and do it all the time.

Some think analog sounds better. Well, if you understand how both methods truly work and have a good engineer at the helm, you will see that is simply not true, not to mention the fact that there are now programs to make digital sound more warm and ambient as analog enthusiasts lay claims to. Analog does sound great when applied by a competent engineer, but so does digital. The rules are just different. Achieving something comparable to analog in the digital realm is completely possible. It is all about knowing the rules. Check out my link to "Analog vs. Digital" and then you will begin to understand what I am talking about here.

Another question I get a lot is: do we use Pro-Tools? We now have Avid Pro Tools 9. If you have Pro Tools projects you are more than welcome to bring them in. However, even though I am quite experienced with Pro Tools it is not my main software preference.

So we use Steinberg's Nuendo and Cubase. Some might know Cubase. Well, Nuendo is the flagship program of that company and Cubase is its baby brother. Nuendo/Cubase allows me to do everything and more than Pro-Tools. I can record, mix, and playback as many sounds as I want. I can run as many plug-ins as the computer can handle without latency (despite PT9's claims that it can, which it really can't) I also find the editing functions to be much more diverse and adaptable and I can edit ten times faster than with Pro-Tools. Either way it doesn't matter. I can run sessions on either software and the results will be the same.

The most common phrase in this industry is: "It's not the gear, it's the ear". I agree and I also believe that, "Sometimes less, is more". So then let us use our ears, and truly listen to the results. Don't pick a studio that spent money on expensive gear they don't even know how to use. Please pick Titan Recording for your next project. You won't regret it.

Like any musician or engineer I just want to make great music and participate in anything to do with the audio field. I've always enjoyed collaborating with others more than creating on my own and I wish to continue doing that as long as possible. I enjoy meeting local musicians who strive to make their own sound as good as it possibly can. This is my chosen profession and I have never expected to get rich from any of this. I just want to be able to continue doing what I love and helping others do what they love. Thanks for visiting our website. I sincerely hope you decide to come check out what we are doing here. Feel free to contact me anytime, and a tour of the studio is always free. More than anything, I enjoy meeting new people. I have rarely met an artist I didn't like. Even if our tastes were not similar. Someone once asked me if I would ever want to work with someone famous, and I said, "No, I would rather help make someone famous".

Contact Info

Email: trs1127@gmail.com
Phone: 314-629-9536

In-Studio Rates:
1 hour: $40 - 2hr minimum
1 Day : $320 (8 Hours Max)
(includes tracking, mixing, and mastering)

Studio Musician:
Drums, guitar, bass = $25/song

Location Recording:
Seattle = $60/hr
Tacoma = $100/hr

Online Services:
-mixing = $40/song
-mastering = $20/song
-drum tracking = $25/song

Other Services: (In-Studio Rates apply = $40/hr)
Film Audio Post-Production
Automated Dialogue Replacement and Voice Overdub
Prepare backup data of previous sessions for client use (client must supply usb or firewire external hard-drive)

Studio Drum Kit Rental:
$25 per day (for wear and tear cost)
Session CD's are free. (1 Per Musician)