Warner Music Spain is raising the bar for music production in Madrid with The Music Station, a state-of-the-art creative hub built inside the historic Príncipe Pio North train station. Outfitted with cutting-edge technology from Solid State Logic (SSL), the facility now includes an ORIGIN 32-channel analogue mixing console as well as U Series controllers and SSL audio interfaces across its studios.
A statement from the company reveals that, “Warner Music Spain and Warner Chappell Music launched an innovative creative hub in Madrid… an artist-friendly complex combined with a new, non-traditional working environment for the company’s employees.”
Built inside a station originally constructed in 1861 and abandoned for nearly 40 years, The Music Station now spans over 10,000 square meters across three floors. Since its renovation began in 2018, the building has been transformed into a multifunctional space featuring five studios, a Dolby Atmos-equipped concert hall for up to 2,000 people, rehearsal rooms, a green screen stage, a content creation hub, and co-working spaces for staff.
At the heart of the facility is Studio One, equipped with an immersive 9.1.6 Dolby Atmos listening environment and overlooking the still-operational train station. This studio houses the SSL ORIGIN console, used for tracking, immersive mixing, and live session recording.
“We’ve turned out almost 150 Atmos mixes for Warner Music since we started doing them,” says Álvaro Marin, the facility’s lead audio engineer. “Dolby Labs were heavily involved with this project.”
The live room adjacent to Studio One spans roughly 35 square meters and is used for tracking sessions and mixing live shows for streaming. Projects using this setup have included performances by 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.
Marin, who has worked with artists such as Shakira and Becky G, notes that the ORIGIN’s design supports a highly efficient and flexible workflow. “We’ll use the ORIGIN pre’s for drum tracking and large sessions… it’s clean unless you engage the ‘DRIVE’ feature which adds some grit to the sound,” he says. “The EQ is probably my favorite feature.” Still, he adds, “If I had to choose, the routing flexibility is arguably more useful to me. There’s so much you can do, like parallel processing and being able to send stuff around the console.”
He also praises the ORIGIN’s straightforward design: “The inline features make it easy to assign the EQ to the large fader or the short fader… and the fact that there are no digital menus means it’s all right there for you.”
In addition to Studio One, the facility includes two production suites and two additional rooms with vocal booths for songwriting and smaller sessions. Each room is outfitted with SSL UF8 advanced DAW controllers, a UC1 plug-in controller, and an SSL 2+ audio interface, with SSL 12s available for expanded I/O when needed.
“The studios are available to any artists signed to the record label or Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, who book studio time via an app,” Marin explains. “Some of these studios have up to three or four sessions a day.”
The Music Station is the product of a vision shared by Guillermo González, President, Warner Music Iberia, and Santiago Menéndez-Pidal, President, Southern Europe, Warner Chappell Music. At its grand opening, Max Lousada, CEO of Recorded Music at Warner Music Group, stated, “It puts the artist at the very center of everything, from the rehearsal rooms to the recording studio, the content creation hub to the live music venue.” He continued, “They’ve created a space that brings to life our vision of what a modern record company should be.”
