Orc impressions, an all-inclusive field recordist trip, real F1 cars, and a new office with amazing studios within. The past year has, as always, been eventful for the Pole crew, with happenings ranging from trash bin raids to the construction of a backyard swamp. Let us present 2024’s…

…newcomers:
We had so many Pole newcomers this year, so a huge hug goes out to all of them. Some new to the game and some really experienced. Everyone is amazing to work with. Special shoutout to Christopher, who we had wanted to get on the team for a long time and came in like a savior on one of our projects and just delivered immediately in a very complicated situation. But they say wonderful is short, and unfortunately, he is leaving us again early next year. We hope to see him back!

…”I’d never thought we’d record this”-recording:
I never thought we’d get to record real F1 cars. That feels almost unreal.

…technological progress:
It may seem small to everyone else, but I finally got my head around to work in Reaper. Once you’re into it, it feels like there’s no turning back.

…surprised bystander:
Neighbors caught me on several occasions collecting fairly big amounts of trash from the public garbage room. IT WAS FOR FOLEY RECORDINGS! And the judicial look on my dog’s face every time I record creature voices.

…studio improvement:
Of course, this has to be the awesome studios that we built at Reimersholme. Three floors with four studios and office spaces, lounge, kitchen, proper storage for our recording gear with a workshop area, etc. And we finally have an ATMOS room! An inspiring place that you somehow don’t want to leave once you walk inside. Great sounds will be created inside these walls!

…best meeting:
Being one of the newcomers at Pole who started out working from home, I would say it was really nice meeting everyone in person for the first time at the yearly conference. An outstanding group of people who all made me feel part of the crew straight away! As expressed by a colleague: “It’s nice to be good, but it’s good to be nice.” – I’d say both aspects apply heavily to the entire Pole crew. Thank you for having me!

…best moment:
From an ego point of view, it was such a joy to hear how one reviewer of The Great Circle not only noticed the love we put into the small, breakable objects but spent lots of time in seeking them out and bashing them around – just for fun.

…favorite equipment I:
Stream Deck (XL,Plus, Studio) + Companion + Reaper. Now, there’s an OSC-fuelled powerhouse for sound design!

Still, nothing beats a Sound Devices 702. 32-bit is quite handy, though, and the MixPre-10s came in very useful when recording vintage Formula 1 cars. And the Sound Devices Scorpio upgrade to 32-bit is also very useful!

Despite keeping my MixPre6-II locked and loaded with adequate mics for quick recordings, I keep reaching for my pocket recorder from Sony (PCM-A10) as it captures surprisingly clean audio given its archetype of the device, all while being super fun to use. Also, the onboard mics reaching up to 40k make it extra fun for sound design too!

The Otamatone I got from Mindfeeder as a holiday present.

…collaboration

All the amazing new and old faces (that are under NDA) we got to work with this year! But, of course, having Fredrik Andersson help us out on so many recordings has been invaluable! Not only a very experienced audio person, but also like having MacGyver along in the session with ideas and solutions for every challenge.

Being solo on the project I was assigned, the feeling of initially being somewhat overwhelmed was brief as I had immense support from Niklas and Robert, both of who made sure I never felt either alone or lost even for a bit, in addition to making sure I was enjoying the process. I would say the feeling was equal once connecting with the client, as they, too, made sure I felt part of the in-house team the moment I stepped in. Hats off!

Right after the summer break, my life fell apart. I found myself in a deep life crisis, and I just had to go on a long sick leave. The way my friends in the team stepped up and filled in for me and the support and time I got to heal is beyond words. I’m so grateful to have the best colleagues in the world. Thank you, Robert and Christopher for doing an amazing job on our project Fellowship. Max and Linus, for the huge support and for your swift action in finding a replacement for me. I love you.

Stefan and Martin deserves a mention here as well. They have not only been incredible in helping us building our new studios, where we hope to be working on amazing projects up ahead. But they have also helped out on some complex field recording tasks, creating props for us out on their farm.

…best music composition

Mats’ music for Chief Rebel – every new track more epic than the last!

I was given the honor of composing music for Fast Travel Games, a title called Action Hero. It is a VR game where you get to act as an actor in an action movie, do all kinds of stunts, and take on a bunch of enemies. It was great fun, not in the least, because the music was high-paced and involved a whole number of different genres which made it varied and a lot of fun.

…most memorable moment:
It must be when the game Fellowship, which I have worked on for three years, finally got announced and the storm that followed from the MMO/RPG community. Amazing stuff! To be continued!

…trickiest programming

Realtime acoustics in Unreal Engine, in a multiplayer setting with hundreds of tracked sounds. Instead of the often-heard “toggle” between sounds being either fully audible or fully occluded, we put a lot of care into creating a system that could move fluently between a fully audible state, via a gradient of obstruction, into a fully occluded state. And no baking of geometry data! Performance was a priority, and we reached very good results with a tightly managed computing workload. Really awesome when a client puts a high priority on the audio experience, and they were a joy to work with!

There was this feature in my project that I completely got stuck on. I sat with it for three days straight. On the third day, I worked through my lunch and was immersed in the code, trying to solve this problem that was just out of reach. Serialization in Unity can be challenging!

…release of audio software:

Like so many others, I just have to say FabFilter Pro-Q 4. The Q3 is on every track in every project of mine, and the Q4 will make life even better. They did it again! Filter Table by Kilohearts is also right there at the top of my list. A truly innovative idea with great opportunities for new sounds.

…didn’t go as we planned moment:

I thought I’d go outside to record a quick set of footsteps in mud. A garden hose on a patch of soft dirt only gave poor results, so the shovel had to come out, together with some sweat-breaking work towards a proper hole in the ground. Still only a tiny splashing for some reason. So, from there, things escalated. Bags of mushy garden fertilizer, more water, wheelbarrows with soil, even more water… Finally, I brought out the little excavator and the front loader to dig a small swamp in the ground, lined with a tarp, to keep all the water inside. Many hours later, I finally had the small sounds I needed.

…best trip

The trip to the US, just outside Chicago, to record three McLarens for “Senna” was quite spectacular. Fantastic people, a lovely place, and incredible cars. Fingers crossed we can go back sometime!

We got to travel to the French Riviera for a recording. The trip took place in November, so it was dark and horrible here in Sweden, but on the Riviera, it was 20 degrees with sunshine. Almost felt as if we were on a holiday (apart from the fact that a recording trip is never like a holiday, it’s actually really hard work).

…we nailed it moment:

When Robert and I wrapped up the audio for the Fellowship Alpha build and danced our way into summer vacation. The best way to a deadline I’ve ever experienced.

…wish for next year

A more stable industry! It has been a few incredibly tough years for the gaming and film industry, and we have all been affected in various ways. So the wish for next year is that it settles and that people can start making their living again by creating high-quality entertainment.

It would be that people keep recognizing the talent, skill, and kindness I have witnessed during my tenure at Pole!

…launch

We have been lucky to work on some amazing projects that were either announced or released during 2024. Among those are Star Wars Outlaws and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which both are IPs that I have had a very strong connection to since childhood.

…most innovative sound design

Eric did some amazing sound design for Star Wars Outlaws when making the vocal expressions for the Gamorrean guards. Out of a number of pig recordings we found, he walked the extra mile to make them sound the same, which is quite a task considering background noise, indoor or outdoor environments and so on, and actually created several hundreds of expressions. Amazing work!

…best collaboration with developers

It would not be fair to just mention one developer as the best collaboration. Each and every one of our customers is amazing, and we often get to work closely with the developers and in-house audio teams, which is a huge privilege. We consider ourselves to be very lucky!

Working with Julia is a dream! We make a great team!

…most impactful soundtrack:

Same one each year. The Diablo II Original Soundtrack. It still blows my mind. And always top 0,1-0,5 of the listeners on Spotify wrapped.

…most surprising audio feedback
Stepping into a long-running project alone, I initially felt a strong feeling of not even remotely wanting to step on any toes. But once I started to own my choices with more confidence, I was sooo relieved and equally surprised to hear I was doing a great job(!). An extremely gratifying feeling knowing one has successfully honored someone else’s hard work!

That my blood impacts needed to sound dry. Back to the drawing board.

…most creative use of foley
This year I needed to record a lot of foley on short notice. In suboptimal environments. For the room to not shine through, I became more of a conductor during the recordings. Layering my source material with other assets in Envy, and messing around in RX and Transient Master, it came out quite okay under the circumstances.

…most successful audio prototype
We found some time after the summer to update our in-house engine loop-flattening tool. Learned a lot about DSP, and we have been able to share the tool with some audio designers we know who are using it on their vehicle loops!

Julia created a prototype component like the day before they left the project we were on, and I assumed that I would have to spend a few days getting it to work with the client’s system. Not at all; it worked right out of the box!

…”I’d never thought we’d record this”-recording
We have been extremely lucky to record the vehicles for Netflix’s “Senna”, meaning we got to record some of the cars that Senna raced. This included the Toleman TG184, a Lotus 97T, and the McLaren MP4/4, MP4/5, MP4/6 and MP4/7. Absolutely amazing! Arriving in the US, walking into a garage, having three of these iconic machines lined up, and just being told to close the door when leaving was completely surreal.

…equipment lost in the line of duty:
We recorded debris from bulky stuff that we dropped from a forklift. One of the recorders did not take that very well when a huge rock fell over it. Rest in peace, dear recorder! Luckily, we got some nice closeups of debris falling over and around it, so it did not die in vain.

…coolest recording location:
One of the sessions we did last year required us to rent one of Sweden’s biggest racetracks, Tierp. We had the whole place to ourselves, and vehicles were brought in from other parts of Sweden in trailers. It was like being on an all-inclusive field recordist trip, where we had the track, a bunch of really amazing vehicles, hotel rooms, and our own restaurant with staff for three days. We even brought a dog, who was lying around in the garage, pampered by the staff while we were recording on the track.

…countries visited:
We did most of the recordings within Sweden during 2024, with the exception of a trip to the US and a trip to France.

…most fun recording:

When I got to record voice lines for orcs and demons. My metal vocal skills came in handy, and I had so much fun doing it.