 Westlake Recording Studios was founded in the early 1970s by the American audio engineer Tom Hidley under the name Westlake Audio.Hidley was experienced in the development of audio technology, having collaborated with Madman Muntz in the development of the first car stereo in 1959, and along with Amnon "Ami" Hadani, he had previously set up another recording studio in Hollywood, TTG Studios, in 1965.The layout of the rooms at Westlake Studios aimed for an acoustic design that could give a fairly flat frequency response at the recording position, with low reverberation delay and extensive use of bass traps.