A room built to record a band playing together.

512 Studios is a full service analog and digital recording studio at 2228 S Lamar Boulevard, in the heart of South Austin and less than three minutes from downtown. The room was designed by Omar Vallejo after the studios he came up recording in — Ocean Way in Hollywood and The Record Plant in Sausalito — and it is laid out the way those rooms are laid out, with a big live floor at the centre and sightlines everywhere.

The live room is 22 feet square with four isolation booths around it. That geometry is the whole point. A drummer can see a bass player, a guitarist can see both, and everyone is playing the same take at the same time with enough separation that the mix is still yours to make afterwards.

Twenty-four tracks of simultaneous recording and an eight-channel headphone system mean nobody is waiting their turn and nobody is sharing a cue mix. It is a room set up for a band, not for one person at a time.

The Austin Chronicle named it Best Studio in 2018 and again in 2019, and named Omar Best Producer in 2019.

Live tracking. A full band cut together on the floor, with the room in the takes rather than edited in afterwards.

Records that need weight. The Crest is a 54-channel analog frame, and a band tracked through a real desk has a different low end from anything modelled.

Projects that start as an idea. Omar produces as well as engineers, and a lot of what comes out of here arrived as a notebook and a voice memo.

Anything on a schedule. Pro Tools 12 runs alongside the analog desk, so the analog path does not cost you recall, edits or a delivery date.