Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

T.I. Buys Atlanta’s Silent Sound Studios

Aiming to preserve a key part of Atlanta’s recording history, Grammy-winning rapper T.I. has purchased Silent Sound Studios.

Atlanta, GA (February 24, 2020)—Atlanta’s Silent Sound Studios has been purchased by Grammy-winning rapper/entrepreneur T.I. (Clifford “Tip” Harris, Jr.) and rechristened Super Sound Studios. Since first opening in 1996, the facility has hosted the likes of Beyoncé, Usher, Pharrell Williams, Whitney Houston, Indigo Girls, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Ritchie, Justin Bieber, Elton John and its new owner, among others.

The building was originally a photography studio and a set of offices, until producer/songwriter Daryl Simmons purchased the building in 1994. Over the course of 18 months, Simmons worked with legendary acoustician Russ Berger of Russ Berger Design Group to reinvent the 6,000-square-foot site as a recording studio.

Berger ultimately created a live room, a control room outfitted with a 64-channel SSL 4000 G console, various production suites, a central equipment room and various support spaces, additionally leaving some of the existing offices as they were. The resulting facility was awarded the 1996 Texas Society of Architects award for Interior Architecture.

Garrett Making Music At Silent Sound

Simmons sold the studio in 2006 to his longtime engineer, Thom “TK” Kidd, who ran the facility until its recent sale to T.I. The rapper’s longtime engineer, Elliot Carter, is the facility’s chief engineer.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that an upstairs suite will be T.I’s primary recording space, and additionally, one production space will be reworked as a podcast studio. Carter told the newspaper, “This was the only space that Tip wanted, with the heritage and quality and size of it. There aren’t many of these left. The whole idea that Tip was involved in keeping the history with the studio, that’s really where I’m proud of being part of it.”

Carter added, “The quality of the room, the quality of the equipment…it’s 25 years old and sounds brand new. It’s just this space—no one builds these anymore.”

Close