Dietmar “Dietz” Tinhof is a leading audio engineer and innovator in immersive 3D audio. Combining artistic sensitivity with analytical rigor, he trained as a keyboardist while studying geography with a focus on spatial research at the University of Vienna. He simultaneously pursued formal audio engineering studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, specializing in music production and the creation of virtual audio tools.
Over four decades, Tinhof has shaped hundreds of productions across pop, rock, jazz, electroacoustic, neo-classical, orchestral and film projects — from studio and home recordings to live performances — using both analog and digital tools. He has contributed to around 500 productions in roles ranging from mixing engineer to producer, programmer, recording and, occasionally, mastering engineer.
The Austria-based Tinhof has also collaborated with local artists like Falco and Conchita Wurst, as well as with acts from all over the world, and producers such as Brian Eno and Thomas Rabitsch. His contributions have been recognized with multiple accolades, including the 2023 Amadeus Austrian Music Award for “Best Sound” for Lemo’s “Chamäleon.” Tinhof has contributed to numerous landmark productions, including Opus’ “The Last Note (Live),” the live surround mix for “World of Hans Zimmer: A Symphonic Celebration,” Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision-winning “Rise Like A Phoenix” and Adam Lambert’s LifeBall 2013 opening performance.
His work spans chart-topping releases, original soundtracks and orchestral restorations, earning gold and multi-platinum awards as well as distinctions for film and media projects.
Tinhof has lectured extensively on audio engineering at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, as well as at private institutions such as Music and Media School, Triagon Academy, Tone-Art and School for Entertainment Technologies. He has also conducted seminars, workshops and master-classes while authoring reviews, tutorials and technical papers. Tinhof serves as a board member of the ÖTMV (Austrian Association of Sound and Music Designers), co-initiated the ÖTMV “Next Generation” initiative in 2024 and became a co-opted member of the WKO professional group committee for Recording Studios. He also contributes as an honorary jury member for the IEM Student Competitions and the Amadeus Austrian Music Awards, and co-authors panels at professional conferences such as TMT and AES.
In 1992, Tinhof created the Austrian Sound Library for early sample-based instruments which had worldwide distribution. In 1999, he was a founding member of Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL), a leading virtual instrument manufacturer. Beginning in 2002, he developed VSL’s Multi Impulse Response Mixing and Reverberation Engine and continues to oversee its project management and maintenance. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in surround and immersive audio, pioneering tools such as the most recent version of Vienna MIR for 3D, released 2022.
In 2019, Tinhof launched his own 3D mixing studio, dedicated to immersive music.
For Dietz, one of the most essential skills of a music producer is knowing when a mix has reached the point where further changes are possible but no substantial improvement will result. He sees the studio as more than a physical space — it is an instrument and a creative tool where the producer actively shapes sound alongside performers.
In an extensive interview with the NYC Daily Post, Tinhof reflected on his journey, the inspirations behind his 3D sound work, and the principles that guide his mixes — offering a rare glimpse into the mind of a highly regarded and influential engineer in today’s music industry.
From geography to sound engineering
Q: You have been working in sound engineering since the 1980s and, in addition to your sound engineering training at MDW, you also studied geography in the field of regional planning and spatial research. How did you originally get started in this diverse career and how does your analytical and scientific background still influence your work as a sound engineer today?
A: Unsurprisingly there was no big master plan when I left school. Music has always been a decisive factor in my life, but the 1980s were the time when ecological issues finally made it to the top of the list of public recognition — at least for my generation. Studying Geography was the attempt to grant these thoughts the importance they deserved, as there was no explicit academic program “Ecology” back then: Geography covered most of the relevant areas (and then some).
At the same time I played keyboards in several local Viennese bands already, and as the guy who already pushed the buttons on his instruments it was just logical that I was responsible for the production of our own demos. The tapes of the bands in the neighboring rehearsal rooms followed just a short time later. I was engineering audio before I was actually aware of the fact.
Going to a commercial studio was an expensive idea at that time, so you can imagine my excitement when I learned there was a new course at the famous University for Music and Performing Arts: Audio Engineering, or actually “Tonmeister”, as it’s called in German. Without much ado, I applied immediately, passed the entrance exam and was accepted straight away for the next course. This gave me access to the university’s studios, which were quite modest by today’s standards, but still considerably better than anything I used before. I loved it and almost lived in these rooms for a couple of years.
The downside was that I was now pursuing two full-time degree programmes simultaneously. This meant I spent more years studying overall, but it also meant that the rigid boundaries between art and research, between technology, natural sciences and humanities became increasingly blurred for me. My holistic approach to audio engineering in general and to music production in particular is most certainly a direct result of these converging studies.
Q: Your official name is Dietmar, but you perform as Dietz Tinhof. Would you like to tell us how you came up with this stage name and what it means to you?
A: That goes back to my early days in secondary school when there was a mildly embarrassing (for a 12-year-old, at least) TV comedian by the name of Didi Hallervorden. As my given name Dietmar is quite unwieldy even when German is your native language, my classmates started calling me “Didi”, too – which I wanted to avoid by all means, really. Eventually I came up with the even shorter abbreviation “Dietz” which sounded totally smart in the ears of the 12-years old, former me. Somehow it stuck, and the rest is history…
Working across genres and collaborations
Q: You have worked for producers such as Brian Eno, Thomas Rabitsch, and many others, as well as artists ranging from Falco to World of Hans Zimmer, including film scores and orchestral crossover projects. Which of these works have had a particular artistic or personal impact on you, and how does your approach differ when mixing pop, orchestral or movie score productions?
A: Truth to be told, my work with Brian Eno was a lucky two-weeks episode rather than a carefully planned gig. Still it was one of the most spurring moments in my career when Brian sat there on a cable reel in the control room of the yet-to-be-finished Pavarotti Music Centar in post-war Mostar (Bosnia), quietly listening to me mixing the (back then) locally famous band Sikter we were working on together, then breaking the silence while the tape (!) rewound with the words, “Dietz, I love the sound you get here.”
I’m convinced all cooperations, at any stage of my career, have left traces in the way I approach music, and sound in general. Somehow it feels like borrowing someone’s ears as soon as I share the studio with others. There’s no doubt that it helps when this person is also able to verbalize their perception, ideally even with professional advice for immediate implementation, but the effect also takes place with the prototypical layman listeners.
It might come unexpected, but there’s not so much difference in how I approach mixes from very different styles. In a first step I simply listen to the music and try to understand how this very piece, in this specific form, performance and recording wants to sound, all by itself. This unprejudiced initial impression is the basis for most of my decisions later-on, and quite often it provides more guidance than the actual briefings by the producer or the artist. Sometimes I even take notes to make sure that I keep the mental and emotional associations of that first encounter alive, because our hearing tends to accept peculiarities and even flaws as reasonable after three or four repeats. Prettification by repetition, in a way.
It’s only then that I switch back from “audience mode” to the analytic listening manner we develop and train over decades of professional music production. Now the factual attributes of the piece I work on will have much more importance than the intrinsic ones.”
Pioneering 3D audio
Q: You have been experimenting with 3D audio since the early 2000s and are involved, among other things, as a developer in Vienna MIR Pro from Vienna Symphonic Library, a system that virtually recreates rooms acoustically. How did you get into 3D technology back then?
A: My fascination for spatial sound got sparked in my teenage days already, way back in the early 80s. The father of my high school girlfriend owned a HiFi system that supported Quadro reproduction, and although content was rare, I heard a few legendary albums there, like Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon”. But as we know, Quadro didn’t really take off. It wasn’t before the late 1990s, though, before I could try similar tricks myself, due to the possibilities introduced with Steinberg’s brand-new Digital Audio Workstation called Nuendo. I mixed my first full-blown surround production for Austria’s contribution to the EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany, on a pre-release Beta version of this software.
Diving deeper into the vast possibilities of spatial audio reproduction I discovered a format — or rather a concept — that not only offered a straightforward way to recording, but also an unprecedented flexibility for moldability in post-production: Ambisonics. Without getting too technical here, this meta-format doesn’t try to capture a pre-defined set of microphones and/or reproduction-channels, but it dissects any signal into its three spatial dimensions X/Y/Z and adds the so-called “omni”-component W to define the overall energy at any point in time. Like that it’s sufficient to store four channels of audio to allow for decoding to any kind of output format later-on.
What’s more, it’s also possible to encode any input signal to Ambisonics, which provides free positional rendering for all sources.
I had this fabulous feature-set in mind when my long-time client and friend Herb Tucmandl invited me to join the development of his most daring endeavor: Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) – an orchestral sample library of behemothal dimensions. Built from millions of carefully recorded, edited and selected single notes from each instrument of the classical, romantic and modern orchestras, it became clear very soon that the biggest of all instruments was still missing: space. The idea sort of imposed itself to treat rooms in the same way as the individual players, with maximum flexibility, and detailed sculpting of the specific acoustic interactions between source, room and listener. The resulting concept was based on thousands of so-called impulse responses (in short IR), which can be seen as acoustic snapshots: recordings from the reaction of the room to the stimulation by a well-defined measurement signal, the impulse. The quest for musical space implicated the choice of the recording format that was spatial by definition – Ambisonics.
The concept gained shape surprisingly fast, in constant exchange with my development partner back then, mastering engineer and software architect Martin Rajek. However, it took VSL several years and lots of additional research before the actual product saw the light of day in early 2009, called Vienna MIR (for Multi Impulse Response). It was already able to virtually re-create a selection of world-class concert halls, studios, cathedrals and other acoustically remarkable venues in planar surround up to eight channels, with six degrees of freedom for both the signal sources and the listener. Still, it turned out that we had to wait for considerably more powerful computers before we could add the 3rd dimension to MIR’s feature set in 2022. The product is now called Vienna MIR Pro 3D and to my best knowledge unrivaled on the entire market. It allows for any chosen output format up to 16 discrete channels, even for raw Higher Order Ambisonics output in case the user wants to employ 3rd-party decoders, eg. for gaming engines, highly specific reproduction needs or scientific tasks.
How 3D audio guides the mix
Q: How has your work with 3D audio influenced your current approach as a sound engineer?
A: To use one of my favorite comparisons: A concert is theater. Music production is film. As their visual sister media, these two art forms are convergent, but by no means identical. My approach to music production is based on the firm belief that it has less in common with detached, purely observational documentation of actual musical performances, but more with a plausible rendering of how things could have been — in other words, making conscious decisions in favor of sonically and emotionally credible narratives rather than mere reproduction. It is almost never enough to just “point the camera at it.” This applies regardless of the desired playback format.
When mixing in immersive audio formats, my vision is to let the audience not just look through an acoustic window from the outside, but to bring them into the space where the music is actually happening. Even when staged in a traditional forward-looking manner, with a stage at the front, this space should envelop the listeners and integrate them with the music, rather than just provide an add-on effect. Sounds are not necessarily supposed to “fly around”, but when they do, it should happen out of artistic necessity as an inevitable means of sonic storytelling. Done properly, an immersive music mix will increase the emotional impact on the listener to a great extent. I have witnessed hard-boiled, seasoned musicians with decades of experience and the usual “been-there-done-that” attitude breaking out in tears when they heard a reasonably well-done representation of their own compositions and performance in 3D for the first time. That’s my take-away from immersive mixing when I do conventional stereo productions: To achieve a comparable emotionally powerful outcome with more modest means.
That said, it’s actually a good moment to switch from stereo to 3D altogether, at least in terms of distribution (not so much in terms of reproduction for the average listener). While Quadro and — to a lesser extent — surround sound didn’t really take off in the music industry, there’s a comparably new format that gained traction: Dolby Atmos. There are many who use the name of this proprietary format (that actually consists of a whole bundle of underlying techniques) as a synonym for “3D audio,” which paves the way for all kinds of misconceptions. Atmos was invented with “media” in mind: movies, sports TV, documentaries. Some aspects of its feature-set were either uncalled for in case of music production, or practically invite tasteless misuse. The mere existence of the so-called Atmos “Objects” can be seen as the main reason many immersive music mixes are full of meaningless movements of instruments, jittery effects, jumping drum-hits and vocalists on the run.
I just returned from one of Europe’s most prestigious audio conventions where I had the honor of being part of the jury for a student competition. What should I say: Everybody’s “first immersive mix” is full of that. Aesthetically, music production in 3D is still in its infancy, it seems — a bit like stereo was in the days of early Beatles records, with the vocals panned hard left and the drums hard right.
Q: How do you see the future of immersive sound?
A: In the long run I’m sure we will see an increasing trend to consolidation and tasteful mastership. The omnipresent pursuit for wobbling, wiggling and trembling will slowly calm down, once everybody has finally (over)used the new toys. Music producers will use Dolby Atmos as a container, a vehicle that carries our 3D content without being part of it. Maybe new formats will emerge that lend themselves to the specific needs of music production even better. We will see.
But there’s no need to wait — immersive music is happening now, and it really rocks.
Challenges and achievements
Q: Since the 1980s, you have been in charge of around 500 commercial recordings, including many chart entries, live albums, complex orchestral and film projects. You have also been nominated several times for the Amadeus Austrian Music Award in the Best Sound category-in 2013 for Jeremy Schonfeld’s “Piece of Me,” in 2018 for Christoph Pepe Auer’s “Songs I Like,” and in 2019 for “From Vienna With Love” by Conchita & the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In 2023, you won the award for your mix of Lemos’ “Irgendwas mit 30.” Which of these productions did you find particularly challenging and how do such awards influence your work as a sound engineer and producer?
A: I was genuinely delighted about every single award and every accolade, and I wouldn’t consider any of them more important than the others. The European music market is much more diverse and pluralistic than the rather monolithic North American scene; there are no industry-wide major awards like the Grammys or the Oscars. It’s quite common that sound guys like me get particularly fond of productions that are not widely known and receive little public attention, due to personal involvement, exceptional musical performances, some unique technical solutions, and so on. I openly admit that I have a soft spot for more quirky, eclectic music that keeps me harmonically entertained, ideally with a compelling rhythmic foundation and unusual sonic ideas. Perhaps it is a coincidence that all of the award-winning productions you mentioned fall into this category, or maybe they were indeed simply outstanding.
Other than that, I wouldn’t say that these awards really influenced the way I work. There’s no doubt that they help a bit to attract new customers, but in the end my mixes, my productions will speak for themselves. Ultimately, credits are the currency that counts in our industry. If I did a great job, there will be someone who takes notice one day, even if the production turned out to be the scene’s best-kept secret.
Building a 3D mixing studio
Q: Your studio was originally designed as a 3D audio lab for the Vienna Symphonic Library and was then transformed into a fully-fledged 3D mixing room during the pandemic. It is considered technically exceptional — acoustically completely decoupled and with its own ventilation and filter system. What acoustic and practical challenges arose during the redesign, especially due to the changed listening position, and how did you address them? What are your personal priorities when it comes to room acoustics?
A: Expanding Vienna MIR’s feature set to the third dimension went hand in hand with a plethora of new possibilities as well as unpredictable hurdles. VSL already owned one of Europe’s leading places for orchestral recording at that time — Vienna Synchron Stage — which offered several control rooms equipped for immersive monitoring. However, it was clear from the very beginning schedules wouldn’t allow for weeks and months of research work and preset creation in these precious spaces. As luck would have it, my wife and I moved to a new house at the same time that had some spare rooms left. Long story short: We decided to set up a small sound studio with 3D monitoring right at home, just one floor below the bedroom. Yay!
The late Michael Vatter — singer-songwriter, long-time client and good friend of mine — made me aware of a highly specialized Italian company by the name of B-Beng. They had developed “bOxy”, a modular system for acoustically fully decoupled, self-supporting room-in-room constructions that claimed to provide almost unbelievable amounts of sound insulation despite their lavish supply of fresh air and daylight. My initial scepticism (“too good to be true!”) gave way to unbridled enthusiasm during my visit to their Milan showroom, while my explicit request for a “direction-agnostic control room” — something I consider a fundamental feature for proper immersive audio monitoring — sparked the interest of Claudio Lamberini, chief acoustic designer at B-Beng.
Physics can’t be betrayed. The heavier a wall, the better the damping of incoming soundwaves will be, so I had to accept a few tradeoffs regarding sound insulation due to structural restrictions of our new house. Still B-Beng could deliver the roughly three tons heavy bOxy to our place only a few months later. I was ready to roll in early 2020 … and then the pandemic hit the world and put everything on hold. Within days I realized that my tiny audio-lab would have to serve me as a mixing room, too, for an undetermined period of time to come.
As a conscious departure from Claudio Lamberini’s original concept, I changed my listening position from the planned spot in the rear third of the room to the centre, to gain space for at least one, or better two people to join me for direct feedback. Sadly, this also meant to sit in the acoustically most problematic location, where all the bad things happen — especially in the bass range — when the room modes make certain frequencies almost disappear. It took some time to find solutions to that problem. I ended up with a combination of classical architectural acoustics in the form of hand-tuned, built-to-the-task panel absorbers, DSP-based speaker calibration for the complete 5.1.4 monitoring system and finally brand-new, digitally controlled active bass traps by the Swiss manufacturer PSI: Three seemingly humble tubes that are able to “tune” themselves to the problematic frequencies all by themselves, with the efficiency of a conventional bass trap of 45 times (!) that size. In other words: Virtual “holes” in the wall. Very impressive and sonically totally transparent.
Now that I am confident in the results I can achieve here, I fully appreciate the complete silence in this very special little room. Of course, human hearing is capable of largely ignoring irrelevant noises, but we tend to forget that this is quite a strenuous mental effort. It ties up energy that we lack when working on delicate sounds or demanding, complex music productions.
Emotional moments and advice for young audio engineers
Q: What has been the most emotional moment in your career so far?
A: That’s almost impossible to tell in a domain that’s all about emotion by definition. Especially at the end of an album production things tend to get passionate in any meaning of the word: On the one hand there are deadlines to be met “and still so many things to do!!”. On the other hand, it becomes evident that you won’t be seeing the people you spent days and weeks with in the highly focused atmosphere of the studio every day anymore. Sometimes this really feels like a departure from close friends. Even better when you meet the same people again a few years later on the verge of new adventures!
Q: If you could give young sound engineers or producers some guidance, which three suggestions would be particularly important to you?
A: 1. It’s the ear, not the gear. While collecting vintage microphones or myriads of obscure plug-ins for mangling sounds in a DAW might be a nice hobby, it doesn’t make you a great engineer. However, don’t expect to hear everything from the very beginning. Critical listening can be learned, but it can hardly be taught.
2. A recording studio is basically, first and foremost, a room that allows us to hear properly. Although human hearing is surprisingly adaptable, poor acoustics are comparable to a painter’s room where there is only green light: It will not only be tedious to paint there, but the created pictures will most likely have a strange look.
3. There might be no rules, but there certainly is an awful lot of ever-growing knowledge. Be prepared to learn something new every day. The good news is that getting old in this business is not a chore, but rather the vital part of the ongoing process of becoming better.
From pioneering technologies to lasting impact
Over the decades, Dietz Tinhof has consistently pushed the boundaries of sound engineering, from immersive audio innovations to shaping hundreds of productions across genres. His career spans live performances, studio productions, film scores and the development of leading virtual instruments. With several Amadeus awards, even more nominations and numerous gold and multi-platinum certifications, he has achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim.
Tinhof’s ongoing work with Vienna MIR Pro 3D continues to redefine 3D music production worldwide, combining technical mastery, artistic vision and spatial innovation to create experiences that are not only heard, but felt. His decades of experience demonstrate immersive audio can do more than reproduce music — it can place listeners at the very heart of the performance.
For Dietz, music production is about capturing and shaping human performance with technical precision and artistic empathy. He sees live recordings as the future of meaningful musical expression in an AI-driven market, where immersive 3D audio lets listeners experience the full spatial and emotional depth of a performance. His mission is to realize the artist’s vision with clarity and impact, creating recordings that are technically flawless and deeply human.
Edited by James Sutton
