Domenico Stanzial received his laurea degree in Physics from the University of Ferrara, Italy, in 1984 with a thesis on Anharmonic Oscillators under the supervision of professor Giuliano Schiffrer.

He was a post-graduate student at the Physics Institute of the University of Ferrara when, in 1986, he joined the Italian Research Council (CNR) as a contract researcher expert in system management and numerical optimization.

In 1988 and 1991 he attended two international advanced courses of "Applied Digital Signal Processing" and "Active Control of Sound and Vibration" at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana (US) and in Denver (Colorado) with a favorable award from the ISVR (University of Southampton, UK) and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of M.I.T. (Cambridge, US).

From 1991 until 2001 he was contract scientist at the Imamoter-CNR Institute working on the development of new applications of sound intensimetry.

He was director of the Interuniversity Centre for Acoustics and Musical Research (CIARM) from 1998 to 2001.

Since 2001 until now is Researcher on the staff of the Italian Research Council.

He was director of the Musical and Architectural Acoustics Laboratory of the St. George School Foundation in Venice (Italy) from 2001 until 2008.

Domenico Stanzial contributed to various research activities and has been the person in charge of the work for several projects funded by the European Union: RACINE-S (IST-2001-3717) and IP-RACINE (IST-2-511316-IP) to developing new multichannel audio technologies for digital cinema.

Since 2005 he is the scientific responsible for CNR of the Acoustics Laboratory of the Physics Department of University of Ferrara.

Since 2008 he became a member of the teaching body of Doctorate Program in Physics of the University of Ferrara for the curriculum in Acoustics supervising the work of Ph.D. candidates.

 

The scientific activity of Domenico Stanzial is documented with many refereed publications, patents and technical reports, and can be framed, for the time being, in the following research lines:

 

1) Sound Energetics

Domenico Stanzial began to develop this original branch of research since 1990 in a joint effort with Giuliano Schiffrer of the Physics Department of the University of Ferrara, following a measurements campaign at the Ferrara Opera House based on advanced intensimetric techniques. The research program, initially focused on the critical review of the standard partition of sound intensity into the active and reactive parts, came to the end with the proposal of splitting sound energy fluxes into the radiant and oscillating parts based on the discovery of the polarization property of sound intensity. In the following years, this research led to the definition of a new physical concept: the sound energy velocity based on the decomposition of air particle acoustic velocity into two Hilbert-orthogonal components. The new concept of energy velocity resulted in framing Linear Acoustics within the 4-dimensional formalism of space-time so understanding the pressure of radiation as an intrinsic property of any sound field. On this rigorous basis Domenico Stanzial invented the "Acoustic Quadraphony" the unique physical audio meta-format for exchanging acoustical information to recreating virtual acoustic reality.

The last milestone of this research is the demonstration of the tight connection existing between the mechanical properties of energy velocity fields and the reverberation time in Acoustics.

 

2) Development of advanced intensimetric techniques with applications to musical and architectural heritage

a. Sound Intensity monitoring of organ pipes with special attention to the phenomenon of the frequency pushing (mitnahme effekt).

b. Sound Intensity monitoring of architectural environments (Opera Houses, St. Mark's and St. George's Basilica in Venice, Baptistry of St. John in the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, Conclave Room in Venice, etc.).

c. Measurement of the spatial differential properties of energy velocity field (hyper-intensimetry) for reverberation time evaluation.

d. Full bandwidth fine calibration of p-v intensimetric probes by means of a progressive plane wave reference field (acoustic wave guide of the Larix Laboratory at the Physics Department of Ferrara University).

 

3) Identification, Recording and Control of sound events for multimedia applications.

Domenico Stanzial studied also some problems related to the active control of sound fields by making the field identification through the true propagator of sound field: the 4-impulse response (1 IR for pressure and 3 IRs for air particle velocity fields). This technology has been developed and tested within two research projects (Racine-s and IP-Racine) funded by the European Commission in the Digital Cinema area. The playback process has been obtained until now by means of standard multichannel configuration of loudspeakers so demonstrating the compatibility with Dolby or DTS systems. The true quad-playback process based on fine calibration of p-v probes is now under development in a joint effort with the Italian Research Council at the Acoustics Laboratory of the Physics Department of University of Ferrara.