The Art and Science of Surround and Stereo Recording

Edwin Pfanzagl-Cardone is head-of-sound at the acoustics department of the "Salzburg Festival" of classical music in Austria. He holds a degree in electronics engineering and information technology from TGM, Vienna (1988) and graduated in 1991 at the "University of Music and Performing Arts" in Vienna receiving a "Tonmeister" degree. From 1994-1999 he was lecturer for theory of sound-engineering at the "Institute of Electro-Acoustics" of this university. In 2000 he completed his studies at the University of Westminster, London with an M.A. in "Audio Production". In 2011 he has received a PhD in musical acoustics and psychoacoustics from KUG - University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz (Austria). From the early 1990s he has been working as sound-engineer in the fields of music recording and live sound reinforcement, as well as sound for film and tv (post-production, Foley) mainly in Europe but also in Japan and the United States. As arranger and composer he has had releases with BMG and SONY in the field of pop-music, while also delivering content to international library-music labels and commercials for radio and tv. He is author of AES-and VDT-convention preprints, has published over 60 articles mainly in sound-engineering magazines (Pro Sound News Europe, Studio Sound, Media Biz, Prospect, a.o.) and is member of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) since 1991, as well as a member of the "Austrian Sound-Engineer's and Music Producer's Association" ÖTMV. In the field of classical music he has worked with conductors like Abbado, Barenboim, Boulez, Dudamel, Gatti, Gergiev, Harnoncourt, Jansons, Maazel, Mehta, Metzmacher, Minkowski, Muti, Sir Rattle, Orozco-Estrada, Salonen, Savall and many others. He has recorded the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, The Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg and a large number of other European and foreign orchestras. For the summer festival 2018 he has realized the 3D-audio sound-effects for Mozart's "Magic Flute" with conductor Constantinos Carydis. Since March 2010 he also teaches sound reinforcement technology in the faculty of design, media and arts at the "University of Applied Sciences", Salzburg. As composer he has released four CDs on an international level; apart from several hundred archival-recordings for the Salzburg Festival his discography as sound-engineer consists of approx. thirty CDs and three LPs. He is inventor of the AB-PC (AB-Polycardioid Centerfill), ORTF-T (ORTF-Triple) and BPT (Blumlein-Pfanzagl-Triple) microphone techniques and holds a patent in surround-microphone technology.

Spatial Hearing.- Correlation und Coherence.- Stereo microphone techniques.- Surround microphone techniques.- Artificial head recordings.- Some thoughts on subjective listening tests.- An attempt at a qualitative ranking of several surround-microphones -- an examination of various studies in the field.- Analysis of frequency dependent correlation and coherence in surround microphone systems.- Analysis of frequency dependent correlation in stereo-microphone systems.- BQIrep -- proposal of a 'Binaural Quality Index' for reproduced music.- Case studies of surround and stereo-recordings. - Short history of microphone techniques including DECCA, RCA and COLUMBIA.