There are people who are as natural and ever-present in life as the water that comes out of the tap or the electricity that comes out of the socket. Our sound engineer Stefan Deistler is our personified faucet/socket combination at LOFT: always there when you need him, as a matter of course, and has been since 1993, i.e., for 33 years now—for us and for the musicians who perform or produce here.

It’s hard to imagine the LOFT without Stefan in my memories.
Our first encounters were his performance as a guitarist with the band Fleisch and his work as assistant to our then sound engineer Ansgar Ballhorn. When Ansgar left us, Stefan remained loyal to us—although that was certainly not an easy step for him to take, as Ansgar had been a long-time friend and employer.

Like many who work and create at LOFT, he is also a career changer, a talented autodidact—both musically and, to some extent, technically: his first professional career began with a journeyman’s certificate in a different field as a dental technician, but after completing this training, he decided to work for and with music and completed further training as an SAE audio engineer. At the same time, he is a family man who has raised three sons with his wonderful wife Anett.
Whether at Radio NRW, RTL, Sat.1, WDR, or Deutschlandfunk – in addition to working in his own recording studio, he was and is a sought-after sound engineer and recording engineer. In addition to countless television and radio productions, he has supervised countless live recordings and CD productions for us at LOFT, including mammoth projects such as the complete recording and post-production of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time – released on more than 120 CDs. He also recorded Pablo Held – The Trio Meets John Scofield at the Cologne Philharmonic Hall at short notice, as he is always there when you need him or have needed him.
In addition, Stefan and his colleague Christian Heck keep their expertise and thus also the technology in our recording studio up to date and of the highest quality. The results are documented in well over a thousand releases, a small fraction of which can be viewed in the production archive on our website.

Dear Stefan,
Your work at and for LOFT has never been a matter of course for us, and we are delighted that you have been with us for so many years and will hopefully continue to be so.
Thank you very much for everything!
Hans Martin & Benedikt