The Music Station: Warner Music Spain’s New Production Facility Installs Solid State Logic ORIGIN Mixing Console and U Series Controllers Across Production Rooms

Music & Audio Production

12/06/25

Warner Music Spain and Warner Chappell Music launched an innovative creative hub in Madrid called The Music Station several years ago, an artist-friendly complex combined with a new, non-traditional working environment for the company's employees. Designed and built within Madrid’s former Príncipe Pio North Station, the facility houses several music production spaces, all outfitted with equipment from Solid State Logic, including an ORIGIN 32-channel analogue mixing console in the flagship tracking and mixing room, and U Series controllers and SSL 2+ interfaces in breakout production spaces.

“We have five studios; one is equipped for Dolby Atmos where the ORIGIN is installed, then we have two production suites and then two additional rooms with vocal booths for songwriting and small recording sessions,” says Álvaro Marin, lead audio engineer, one of three in-house engineers at the facility. 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 alternatively available when more I/O is required in the writing rooms. The facilities are available to any artists signed to the record label or Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, who book studio time via an app. “Some of these studios have up to three or four sessions a day,” he reports.

Reviving an abandoned train station

The Music Station spans 10,000 square meters (nearly 108,000 square feet) 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. The station’s central hall is now a concert venue that holds 2,000 people (1,000 seated), and there is also a small showcase stage with an 11.1.6 immersive speaker system, a green screen stage, rehearsal spaces, educational amenities and staff co-working spaces.

The ORIGIN is positioned 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,” Marin says. “Dolby Labs were heavily involved with this project.”

SSL ORIGIN as the centerpiece

The ORIGIN is typically used for tracking sessions in the adjacent live space, which measures around 35 square meters (370 square feet), 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. We'll often do recordings with this workflow. We'll also use the desk for drum tracking — or any tracking — in our tracking space,” says Marin, who has worked with Shakira and Becky G, among others.

Having worked at The Music Station since it opened, Marin has had plenty of experience with the ORIGIN’s onboard mic preamps and EQ. “We'll use the ORIGIN pre’s for drum tracking and large sessions. That pre works just fine; it's clean unless you engage the ‘DRIVE’ feature which adds some grit to the sound. The EQ is probably my favourite feature,” he says. But, he reconsiders: “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 continues, “It's a very simple workflow for us. 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 Music Station is the brainchild of Guillermo González, President, Warner Music Iberia and Santiago Menéndez-Pidal, President, Southern Europe, Warner Chappell Music. At the grand opening of the facility, senior WMG executive Max Lousada, CEO, Recorded Music, commented, “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. It’s been a lot of hard work to pull together, but they’ve created a space that brings to life our vision of what a modern record company should be.”

The Music Station: Warner Music Spain’s New Production Facility Installs Solid State Logic ORIGIN Mixing Console and U Series Controllers Across Production Rooms

Reviving an abandoned train station

SSL ORIGIN as the centerpiece

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