Elevating Audio Production at Soundsgood Audioworks with Avid Tools

Pete Koskimäki is a sound designer and composer best known for his work on TV dramas and commercials. He is also one of the owners of Soundsgood Audioworks, located in central Tampere in Finland. The company provides high-end audio production services—from location recording to final mix—for both Finnish and international productions.

Pete recently shared his thoughts about sound design and the role of Avid products in his workflows and in the studios at Soundsgood Audioworks. His reflections draw on 25 years of experience and offer valuable insights into the essentials of sound design and what makes for successful results.

Could you briefly describe Soundsgood Audioworks’ three studios?

In 2020 we completed our Dolby Atmos-certified main mix room. At the heart of the room is an Avid S6 and Pro Tools | MTRX II, running on a Pro Tools | HDX system. The 7.4.2 monitoring setup uses Amphion speakers, and the acoustics were designed to meet Dolby Atmos specs in full. While most of our projects are still delivered in 5.1, I see Atmos as the future format for TV and streaming. That’s why it’s important for us to have both the expertise and the equipment to work in that format.

We mix some projects in Atmos even if the final delivery is 5.1. Working in Atmos feels more immersive, and I find that the mixes come out sounding wider and more open. Those characteristics also carry through into the 5.1 and even stereo fold-downs. Plus, it’s an advantage to have the sessions archived in Atmos if they’re ever needed later.

In early 2025, we finished a combined second mix and recording room with a 5.1 Genelec The Ones monitoring setup. At its core is a Pro Tools | MTRX Studio with Avid S1 and Avid Dock controllers. It now also serves as a versatile ADR and Foley stage.

We also have a small edit room that doubles as an iso booth, with Genelec stereo monitoring and an Avid MBOX Studio. It’s perfect for things like voice-over sessions.

When you rebuilt the Dolby Atmos room from scratch, you brought in external acoustic expertise. What were you aiming for with the rebuild?

Yes, we built an entirely new Atmos mix room in 2020, where Janne Riionheimo and Perttu Laukkanen from Akukon did a fantastic job on the acoustics. The result is a room that sounds amazing. That was no small feat, since Dolby’s recommended reverb times for Atmos rooms are longer than a typical music control room. This made designing the acoustics especially challenging for the relatively small space.

From the start we also wanted to design the entire signal path and system so the room would easily adapt to whatever the future brings. I’ve learned that constantly upgrading a studio bit by bit often leads to little “patchwork solutions.” One goal in this project was to avoid that as much as possible.

Also, Avid’s MTRX together with Digital Audio Denmark’s DADman felt like the clear choice because of their expandability and versatility. The virtually unlimited routing capability was a big deciding factor to choose that combo.

Is the audio traffic between rooms handled purely over Dante with the MTRX?

Pretty much, yes. Thanks to Dante, the rooms can easily be used interchangeably as recording spaces. We still have analog lines just in case, but we haven’t actually needed them yet. Routing audio to the Atmos Renderer was also straightforward with MTRX and Dante. These days, though, we use the internal Pro Tools Atmos renderer, so the external renderer has become unnecessary.

Last year we upgraded the MTRX to a Pro Tools | MTRX II mainly because I wanted the Thunderbolt option to route audio from the other software tools running on the same workstation as Pro Tools. That expansion card wasn’t available for the older MTRX.

What practical benefits has the MTRX II and DADman combination brought to your workflow?

I’ve been extremely happy with this setup and what DADman makes possible! A fun detail in our DADman profile is what we call the “theater simulator,” which is just one button away. With a single press, our neutral 7.2.4 monitoring switches to 5.1, with surround channels paired and the speaker responses shaped through the MTRX II’s SPQ processing to mimic a typical movie theater sound system.

Of course it doesn’t literally turn the room into a theater, but so far the mixes we’ve prepped with this profile have translated really well when moved into an actual theater mix environment. The balances and dynamics have been very close to final right away.

You recently rebuilt the second mix room as well. Did you go with the same routing and monitoring approach there?

Almost. After the experiences with the main control room, there wasn’t really a need to even consider alternatives for the interface and monitoring control—the room got an Avid Pro Tools | MTRX Studio.

We use Digital Audio Denmark’s MOM controller in the Atmos room, but here we wanted to try an Elgato Stream Deck, which we easily programmed to control DADman.

Why did you choose Avid’s DAW controllers for mixing?

Over the years my workflow for sound design and TV mixing has evolved into a combination of custom shortcuts, mouse clicks, and riding a few faders for automation. So, I’ve been able to get by with a pretty compact setup. The S1 and Dock covered all the needs of the Atmos room when it was first built.

As the business grew and we built the second mix and recording space, we needed another control surface. While another S1 setup would have been a safe choice, I wanted to explore whether an Avid S4 or S6 could speed things up, make life easier, or improve results. After reading the manuals and watching endless Coffee & Consoles videos, the answer to all those questions was a clear yes!

So the S1 and Dock were moved to the second room, and a brand-new S6 arrived in the main mix room.

Why did you specifically opt for the Avid S6 for your Atmos room?

We chose the S6 after a lot of consideration. It’s often seen as a system suited for large facilities because of its size and price, but my vision was a bit different. As a fully modular system, the S6 let us pick precisely the modules that fit my workflow.

From the beginning, the idea was to build a custom frame where everything I need is within arm’s reach. For me that means the master and automation modules, 16 faders, a knob module, and a joystick module—that’s it!

Which features of the S6 support your workflow the most?

The key features that make such a compact setup work are the Track Layouts (Layout Mode) and Attention Presets. My entire workflow is based on them. I don’t navigate session tracks in the “traditional” way. Instead, I rely on pre-built 16-channel layouts. When the template is built on those layouts from the start, navigation in a 500-track drama series session is lightning fast.

Attention Presets also ensure that whatever track I select, the parameters always map to the same familiar places, if desired: EQ goes to the knob module, panning to the joystick, dynamics to the master module, and so on. Whatever the track, the parameters I need are always where I expect them to be, supporting each stage of the work as well as possible.

How has the S6 changed your day-to-day mixing?

The main goal of the S6 investment was to make the work more efficient and faster, especially during mixing. It’s been really interesting to develop new working methods around the S6 as an alternative to mouse-driven mixing.

It’s also been effortless to pre-dub a feature film in my own studio and then move to a mix stage with an S6—such as Meguru here in Finland—for the final polish in a real cinema environment. The transition has been smooth and quick.

How does your own style come through in your work—or is the sound always defined by the project?

I don’t consciously aim for a personal sound; I try to find the sound that fits each project. That said, like most people who’ve done this long enough, I probably do have a certain signature.

In the first decade of my career I did a huge number of commercials for radio and TV. That gave me an almost obsessive focus on clarity and separation of the essential elements—typically dialogue.

Now that I’ve been working more on drama and feature films, I’ve had to make a conscious effort to dial that “commercial dynamic” back a little. Dialogue clarity is still absolutely crucial, but in drama, especially on the big screen, dialogue gets to—and must be allowed to—breathe more.

How do you typically start work on a new project?

Different projects start in different ways. For example, in drama series, I usually come on board before filming begins, and my first contact with the story is often the script.

Early on, there are also discussions with the director and producers about both the style of the show and the story itself—the overall mood we are aiming for. The sooner and better I understand the client’s vision and expectations, the easier it is to approach the work from the right angle, with the right mindset.

At this stage, I actually try to avoid too much discussion about technical details, and instead focus on the story, what a particular scene is fundamentally about—what we want to convey, and especially what it should feel like.

My path into film and TV sound came through composing. When you compose to picture, you have to understand the causes and effects, and the motives and emotions that drive the story forward.

Photo credit: photos by Pete Koskimäki