Anyone who’s looked for a recording studio with world-class equipment in Palm Beach County knows that they’re hard to find. Until now.
Liberated Studios (liberatedstudio.com) opened in Wellington late this summer to fill that world-class equipment void. Finding it, however, can still be a bit of a challenge.
That’s partially by design. The 1,500-square-foot facility is isolated amid the green grass, trees and winding roads of prime Wellington equestrian real estate, and sits behind the home of husband-and-wife Ian Carey (a composer and keyboardist) and Shanti Ellis (a vocalist). Their third studio partner is Brad Holland.
The three designed and acoustically treated the former guest house, which now features two primary rooms, each with a legendary recording board —the Studio A main room with its Neve 96-channel V66; the Studio B mixing and overdubbing room with a Logic SSL 8000G/B G Series Console.
“The Logic desk is actually the more widely-used of the two,” says Carey. “The Neve is two desks put together, since I bought an extra one in order to have spare parts. Both brands are very sought after, and just great equipment.”
Anyone who refers to such coveted mixing boards as “desks” must have put in some serious work behind them. Carey’s client list includes award-winning service for the recording labels like Warner Bros., EMI, Island, Universal, Atlantic, and Sony, and artists from Snoop Dogg and the Black-Eyed Peas’ will.i.am to Katy Perry and Timbaland.
Part of the reason the studio’s exact location isn’t completely open to the public is, in fact, because such celebrities might be there.
“Most of my work has been remixing R&B, pop and hip-hop artists,” Carey says, “and writing dance music and doing dance remixes for pop artists. But I’ve had a gold Top 10 record under my name in the U.K., a couple multi-platinum records, one of which hit number 1 in Australia, and a Best Dance Video MTV Video Music Award in Australia in 2009. A lot of that success helped fund this place.”
The video award statuette is in the shape of the familiar MTV “Moonman” logo from the network’s early days, and Carey’s plaques for his gold and platinum records are also on display just outside Studio B. Not surprisingly, the facility also has a video production team.
Liberated Studios’ additional recording engineers are Dustin Breeden, a graduate of Full Sail University in Winter Park, and Chris Arrue, who studied at the SAE Institute in Miami. They work the boards amid an additional live tracking room, kitchenette and lounge. A pool and sauna also sit in-between the house and Studio A.
And with cues from Abbey Road Studios in London, the studio specializes in mastering recording projects through Maselec gear using Bowers & Wilkins monitoring. Online mixing and mastering options are also available.
“The key is the combination of the Maselec console and those monitors,” says Carey. “That’s behind the sound at Abbey Road, even if most people in the U.S. may not have even heard of those brands.”
Carey grew up in Maryland, which is where he met relocated Queens, N.Y., native Ellis. The couple named the studio after a famed retail music store where Carey was once a record buyer, Music Liberated in Baltimore.
“It was a legendary place,” says Ellis. “John Waters, the film director, is from Baltimore, and he used it for the location scene in ‘Hairspray’ where the cast was dancing in a record store.”
“My father was a live sound engineer while I grew up in Maryland,” Carey says. “I got my start in the music biz at Music Liberated, then worked for a retail instrument chain called Mars Music before it folded. After that, I became more involved on the production and engineering side.”
Still, the move to Florida was much more circuitous than a straight line south from Baltimore along I-95.
“I got a lot of musical work in Europe,” Carey says. “We moved to the Netherlands for a couple years, then to Spain for five or six, so we were basically overseas for all of the 2000s. It was a great scene in Europe, with much more of a middle-class for musicians. There’s a lot of support from the government there for education, and the arts in general. When we decided to move back to the United States, we settled on either Los Angeles or in the vicinity of Miami.”
“This seemed like a good hub,” adds Ellis, “since we didn’t necessarily want to actually live in Miami.”
“I’m close enough this way, since I’ve gotten a lot of work there,” says Carey. “But this location provides a quiet place to write and work.”
The couple has an indie electronica recording group called Aubergine Machine, and also composes music and records demos for clients, often with Ellis providing the vocals.
“We know there isn’t another studio in Palm Beach County with equipment this high-end,” says Carey. “We wanted to provide that option in hopes that some people would be looking for that, although others have questioned why we bothered.”
“We bothered because there are so many people in Palm Beach County,” Ellis exclaims. “There are a million people here!”
And nearly that many reasons to consider the facility, which include an additional assortment of Blue Bottle microphones (along with those by Neumann, AKG, Avantone, Shure and Audio Technica), an array of analog and digital keyboards; Maselec, Logic, and Universal Audio compressors, and an Otari 1/4-inch analog tape mastering deck.
Despite its banner equipment, Liberated Studios’ basic rates ($70-$100 per hour) are competitive with other popular South Florida facilities that truly are “home studios.” Those rates fluctuate depending on which studio is booked, the need for an engineer or producer, and total hours needed. For a quote, call 561-797-7548.