May 1, 2017

Meet Andrew Feliciano of Voice Trax West in Studio City

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Feliciano.

Andrew, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
As a Los Angeles native, I took an interest in the vibrant music scene in L.A during my high school years. This was during the 1990’s when punk and 3rd wave ska was popular. I also happen to get interested in mathematics in school and went off to a 4-year college thinking I would study math and music. Math got too hard and computer science took its place. I left school in 2001 with a computer science and music degree, which was not the best timing as it was the middle of the dot com crash. So, with no clear path to a job I decided to add to my education and jumped into a recording trade school. With my music and computer knowledge and involvement in the music scene, recording seemed like a logical next step. Everyone that goes to recording school mostly has their sights set on music, but as I would learn that is just one segment of the recording industry. Using my computer knowledge was my foot in the door, I landed myself an entry level job at Voice Trax West which I am the owner of today. I worked my way through at this small company and became an accomplished audio engineer recording hundreds and commercials, cartoons, narrated TV, phone systems, and anything else needing voice recording. Then in 2008 as the current owners were ready to move on from studio ownership, I stepped in to take over. Also, in 2008 I found out that I had worked on a project in 2007 that won a Grammy. This happen to be for the audiobook version of An Inconvenient Truth, which is not how most people win a Grammy, but I was happy to be part of the production and be recognized for the work that we did on that project. Voice Trax West continues to do what it has done since 1983 when it was started and I am happy to be part of it and continue that legacy.

Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest challenges revolve around learning how to effectively run a small business and recover from the mistakes that you ultimately will make. As an entrepreneur, you are in charge of everything and are just not going to be good at everything, nor should you. Recognizing when you need help and knowing how to get that help, be it accounting, marketing, or simply operations and management tasks makes all the difference in preventing mistakes and reaching your business goals.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are an audio recording studio that specializes in voiceover. That means we record audio for radio and TV commercials, animation, narrated shows, web videos, phone messages, and anything else that requires recording a voice. We have a few specialties, large scale phone systems, and Text-to-Speech voices. These are somewhat niche segments that not everyone is familiar with. Within those specialties, we have seen it all and can often devise a process to accomplish unique requirements. With a computer background I am able to incorporate the latest techniques to accomplish tasks others won’t be doing for some time to come.

I approach everything with integrity and honesty. This doesn’t always lead to the most financially prudent decisions, but it does create a longevity to what we do because there is trust in the community in what we do and how we do business. My goal is to do this a long time, and the financial success will come in time. In addition, being consistently good at what we do, and if there are mistakes own up and move forward. This is how we keep clients in the face of inevitable mishaps. That again all plays into longevity of the business and reinforcing that we are here for the long haul. Being consistently good can get boring because it becomes repetitive, but that is a sign we are doing our job and it’s important that we don’t lose sight of that.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Los Angeles is the place to be for recording, but there is a fair amount of competition. So, starting something new can be quite the challenge to bring in new clients, but for a person with the ability to market themselves it is definitely possible. If someone were to start out here, location is key. In my experience, people are not willing to travel very far, so finding a location that can capture clients who would rather come to you then drive 30 more minutes to another place will make a big difference.

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