Hip hop engineer/producer Ray Seay, mixer of recent Number One singles for Lil’ Jon (“Get Low”), Ciarra (“Goodies”) and Trick Daddy, (“Let’s Go”), recently opened The Vault, his personal project studio in Miami.
Though Seay occasionally opens his doors to outside clients and producers, he states, “I got this place for mixing. I got tired of getting bumped out of other studios, and decided it was time to get my own place.”
Located in the former home of engineer/mixer Bob Rosa’s (Backstreet Boys, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, 98 Degrees) Bogart’s Studio, The Vault houses a 64-channel SSL G+ console, Pro Tools|HD (Seay is a Pro Tools endorsee), plasma-screen TVs and out-of-the-box items such as the Millennium Media NSEQ-2, GML EQs, a Lexicon 960L reverb unit and Crane Song converters. Seay also built a new front wall in the control room to house a set of Genelec 1036A dual 18-inch 3,300-watt-per-channel mains.
Aside from a few cosmetic updates, the tracking room remains much the same as the Bogart days, with a spacious live room and iso booth. The newly erected Studio B, used mainly for pre-production, currently houses a second HD unit (console to be determined), offers one iso booth and is tie-lined to the main room.
While Seay is best known as an in-demand mix engineer, he says he’s “starting to get into producing” and is currently developing local acts.
