Welcome to Titan Recording Studio. My name is Scot Michael, Owner and professional Audio Engineer with nearly 10 years experience as a pro-engineer. Titan Recording Studo 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 studio's 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 un-intimidating, 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. And, the one thing I have realized is 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, and an excellent Control Room. Plenty of space to deal with most recording situations.
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. Hanging out in lounges with HDTV'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 had to be paid for, and who better than some poor 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 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. So 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 studio's 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 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. 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? The answer is no. There are a lot better programs out there for many reasons. If Pro-Tools is considered the industry standard then that is sad and should certainly change in my professional opinion. Why don't we use Pro-Tools? Pro-Tools has two versions, HD and LE. LE is more affordable, but still overpriced. HD is ridiculously overpriced and pointless these days since computers are more than fast enough to handle plug-in processing and audio recording/playback without the need for DSP chips. The software itself is decent as far as the interface and useability, but there hardware is less than satisfactory. I can hear the weak, thin sound of Pro-Tool's converters in a heartbeat. This is why most studio's buy 3rd party converters to use with the software such as Apogee. If you have the money, that is fine but adds to the expense and there is no benefit to using Pro-Tools over any other viable program. The biggest reason I do not like Pro-Tools is something implemented into the software that is absurd. It is called "Voices". Voices are Pro-Tool's way of keeping you from playing back as many sounds as your computer can handle. So lets say Pro-Tools LE has 32 voices. That means you can only listen to 32 sounds at a time. After that no more. That is fine if you are only doing around 16 tracks, but what if your working on a film-score, or post production for a film? It just seems like another way to get you to spend more money in my opinion.
So we use Steinberg's Nuendo. Some might know Cubase. Well, Nuendo is the flagship program of that company and Cubase is its baby brother. Nuendo allows me to do everything and more than Pro-Tools without having to spend a ton of money. I can record, mix, and playback as many sounds as I want. I can run as many plug-ins as the computer can handle and I can use whatever hardware I want. I also find the editing functions to be much more diverse and adaptable and can edit ten times faster than Pro-Tools.
The most common phrase in this industry is: "It's not the gear, it's the ear". If that is the case, then why do musicians and audiophiles go so crazy over what gear is being used? Sometimes the cheap stuff will surprise you and the expensive stuff will let you down. Sometimes less is more.
1 hour: $35 (includes tracking, mixing, and mastering)
1 Day : $280 (willing to negotiate based on project)
We Do Film-Post Production as well as Music Production
Studio Musician: $25 per song
-Instrumentation includes: drums, guitar, and bass
Studio Drum Kit Rental: $25 per day (for wear and tear cost)
Session CD's are free. (1 Per Musician)
WE KEEP BACKUPS OF SESSIONS UP TO A MONTH AFTER ITS CONCLUSION. IF YOU WANT YOUR SESSION BACKED UP, WE REQUIRE THE CLIENT TO BRING AN EXTERNAL USB OR FIREWIRE HARD-DRIVE.
