Dueling Pianos: International Chopin Piano Competition Is as Competitive as a Ballgame - and Has Amazing AudioWhen the sound is paramount, the audio team turns to familiar techniquesBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, October 22, 2025 - 2:59 pm
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It's a competition as intense as any Super Bowl or World Series game. Competitors train for years, it's broadcast and streamed live globally, and it offers amazing audio.
The International Chopin Piano Competition took place this past weekend in Warsaw, with concerts featuring the prize winners airing Oct. 21-23. And it can be watched from anywhere. As the NY Times describes it, Participants train as if they were elite athletes, with superhuman focus and skill, preparing hours of music, even though many of them end up performing only a fraction of it. But victory, when achieved, can be just as glorious as a gold medal.
The mix of a binaural stream, via Dolby Atmos, was handled by an SSL System T console.
The competition, which takes place every five years, is scheduled around the anniversary of Chopin's death, Oct. 17, and features his music exclusively. The requirements are as rigorous as any NFL player's: whereas a quarterback can refer to a wrist chart for play cues, Chopin competitors have to memorize as much as three hours' worth of music.
This year's event began with 181 competitors - performances take place at the 1,100-seat Warsaw Philharmonic concert hall - and is broadcast on Polish state television and radio and through the competition's website and YouTube channel.
Competing for a top prize of 60,000, most participants are from China, Japan, and South Korea, which together had 106 pianists in the running, followed by 10 from Poland and seven from the U.S. Successive rounds of (literally) play whittled that down to a final field of 11, including two Americans: William Yang, 24, and Eric Lu, 27, who ultimately won the top prize. Competitors are scored on a scale of 1-25, with 25 being perfect.
Time-Tested TechniquesAccurately capturing the sound of the competition relied on orchestral and classical-music microphones and techniques. They were chosen and deployed by Polish Radio Engineer Joanna Popowicz. According to her Facebook feed, the Shoeps MK2 linear omnidirectional microphone is a mainstay of the field.
Polish Radio Engineer Joanna Popowicz was in charge of the microphone setup for broadcasts from the International Chopin Piano Competition.
There are loads of pairs above the piano and stage generally; most of the mics are used on the orchestra, she explains. For the piano, at the moment, we use [a] combination of five to six pairs for the stereo mix. Apart from their sound [quality], of course, Schoeps mics also have this fantastic visual advantage, especially during video stream.
The broadcast - whose Polish Radio team also included Julita Emanuilow, Gabriela Blicharz, Agnieszka Szczepa czyk, Michal Bereza - provided a binaural stream, via Dolby Atmos, over the Dwo jka Program 2 Polskiego Radia channel. The mix was done on an SSL System T console.
This was, after all, a television broadcast, so cameras also got their due. Sony FR7 PTZ cameras with Sony FE PZ 16-35mm lens covered the action out front and backstage, as did several Sony HDC-4300 handheld broadcast cameras.
Popowicz's Facebook stream is mediated in North America by Calgary, AB-based recording engineer Zana Corbett, who notes that the engineering team are all tonmeisters: recording engineers and producers certified by advanced degrees from university programs that combine musical and audio-engineering training.
Recording engineer Zana Corbett says of the Chopin Competition's audio team, They're doing three different mixes at the same time.
What goes on the YouTube stream is stereo, but they're also doing binaural, and they're doing Atmos, too, says Corbett, who holds a master's degree from McGill University's Sound Recording program and has been an audio engineer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Music Center. They're doing three different mixes at the same time.
Corbett - at the time she spoke with SVG, she was also engineering the Honens International Piano Competition, taking place in Calgary this week - says the total channel count of the on-air mix of the Chopin competition's sound is between 30 and 40, a number that rivals many pro-sports broadcasts. She describes the mix process as not super active but requiring a deft touch to keep the sound as consistent as possible without impeding its natural dynamics.
It can go quickly from complete silence to the very loud passages, she says, so we try to keep it more or less equal.
An observation that would be right at home in any sports stadium or arena.
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Dueling Pianos: International Chopin Piano Competition Is as Competitive as a Ballgame - and Has Amazing AudioWhen the sound is paramount, the audio team turns to familiar techniquesBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
