Warner Music Spain and Warner Chappell Music launched The Music Station several years ago, an artist-friendly complex in Madrid offering a non-traditional working environment for the company’s employees. Designed and built within the former Príncipe Pio North Station, the facility houses several music production spaces, all equipped with equipment from Solid State Logic, including an Origin mixing console in the main room, and U Series controllers and interfaces in breakout production spaces.
The 32-channel Origin analogue mixing console can be found in Studio One, overlooking the current train station, a room that is equipped for immersive 9.1.6 Dolby Atmos listening and mixing. ‘We’ve turned out almost 150 Atmos mixes for Warner Music since we started doing them a couple of years ago,’ says Álvaro Marin, lead audio engineer, one of three in-house engineers at the facility. ‘Dolby Labs were heavily involved with this project.’
The Origin is typically used for tracking sessions in the adjacent live space and to mix live shows in the venue for streaming release. Live performance projects have included Demarco Flamenco and Fangoria.
‘We have a Dante network in the live space, which comes into the Origin so we can spread everything out to the console’s input channels or insert points if required,’ Marin explains. We’ll often do recordings with this workflow. We’ll also use the desk for drum tracking – or any tracking – in our tracking space.
‘We’ll use the Origin preamps for drum tracking and large sessions – it’s clean unless you engage the Drive feature, which adds some grit to the sound. The EQ is probably my favourite feature, although if I had to choose, the routing flexibility is arguably more useful. There’s so much you can do, like parallel processing and being able to send stuff around the console.
‘It’s a very simple workflow for us,’ he continues. ‘The inline features make it easy to assign the EQ to the large fader or the short fader; I really like that. And the fact that there are no digital menus means that it’s all right there for you. Sometimes we’ll have two, three or four producers in the room, so we’ll send them all to the console, and they can all hear themselves. That’s definitely a good use for it. I would love to have the 16-channel version one, personally. It’s a great console.’
The complex comprises five studios in all. One is equipped for Dolby Atmos where the Origin is installed, with two production suites and two additional rooms that have vocal booths for songwriting and small recording sessions. Each of the four breakout production suites features two SSL UF8 advanced DAW controllers, a UC1 plug-in controller, and an SSL 2+ audio interface. Two SSL 12 audio interfaces are available when more I/O is required in the writing rooms.
These facilities are all available to any artists signed to the record label or Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, who can book studio time via an app. ‘Some of these studios have up to three or four sessions a day,’ Marin notes.
The Music Station is the brainchild of Guillermo González, President, Warner Music Iberia and Santiago Menéndez-Pidal, President for Southern Europe at Warner Chappell Music. In all occupies 10,000sq-m across three floors at the old train station – which was built in 1861 and lay abandoned for about 40 years until a renovation project began in 2018. Accompanying the studio spaces, the station’s central hall is now a 2,000-capacity concert venue (1,000 seated), and there is also a small showcase stage with an 11.1.6 immersive system, a green screen stage, rehearsal spaces, educational amenities and staff co-working spaces.
More: www.solidstatelogic.com