Stephan was born in Wuppertal in 1974 to a German violist and a French cellist, two orchestral musicians. Music is omnipresent in the house, and he often spent his childhood in orchestra rehearsals and the orchestra pit. Stephan is playing the violin since the age of 5, and later also the piano. At the age of seven, he moves to Bochum in the culturally vibrant Ruhr region.

Just 13 years old, he was introduced to the fascinating world of audio technology by a friend at school, and together they began to record chamber music evenings, demos and festivals with scavenged material, including two AKG C1000 mics, a Revox analog tape recorder and later a borrowed Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder, in order to copy the recordings and use them to boost their pocket money. At the age of 16, they produce a vinyl record with the school orchestra and the school's own jazz band.  The first sound recordings of local bands are made, and the collaboration with orchestras in the Ruhr area leads to a variety of live sound projects in the coming years, which Stephan supervises at the mixing desk, including concerts with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra and guests such as Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull, Herbert Grönemeyer, John Corigliano and Mauricio Kagel. He is now also responsible for the orchestra's popular open-air concerts at the end of the season, which attracts thousands of listeners.

After leaving school, Stephan first studied musicology at the University of Bochum and later sound and video engineering at the Robert Schumann Conservatory of Music in Düsseldorf. During his studies, he assisted major music producers and for his first recordings, he was awarded by the German Tonmeister Association (VDT), and the Audio Engineering Society (AES). He also starts working at the TV broadcaster ZDF's Düsseldorf studio as a technician on live broadcasts and in the control room. At the same time, he makes his first professional music recordings as a freelance recording producer, which are released on the Telos Records label in 1998. 

In 1999, he meets his fellow student Jin Choi during a study project. They quickly realize that they have the same mindset and, while still students, they establish sempre la musica (slm), a music production company based in Germany and South Korea. Their client base soon includes well-known musicians and ensembles, and the premises of Christian Zimmerli's Düsseldorf-based Studio Zimmerli provide them with a professional facility where the recordings are post-produced. Already in the first years of their collaboration, slm can look back on an impressive number of productions, including a Beethoven symphony cycle with the Gangnam Symphony Orchestra and the first projects with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, which have been released by Deutsche Grammophon.

Due to his fascination for TV, Stephan now also starts working as a sound engineer in the post-production mix/synchro dubbing department of WDR television, where he is responsible for voiceover recording and mixing formats from short news clips to full-length art feature films. Later, he will also work for ZDF in Mainz in the same position and gain a total of 13 years of experience as a freelancer in this field.

In 2006, Stephan produces the soundtrack to the PC game blockbuster Gothic 3 for the German game developer Piranha Bytes together with in-house composer Kai Rosenkranz. The recordings with a large symphony orchestra, choir, Japanese percussion ensemble and many other international artists are still considered groundbreaking for a game score and have received multiple international awards. Further projects of Game score music followed, including Drammatica – the very best of Yoko Shimomura for the Japanese games label Square Enix and Symphonic Fantasies Tokyo for game music events producer Merregnon Studios.

In 2008, he fulfilled a childhood dream and founded his own record label, myrios classics, which immediately found worldwide distributors at MIDEM Cannes and launched with two productions, including Tabea Zimmermann's album SOLO, which was celebrated internationally as an outstanding success. Other artists quickly join the label and place their trust in Stephan's work, including pianist Kirill Gerstein, the Hagen Quartet and composer-clarinettist Jörg Widmann. Working not only as a producer and engineer, but also in the field of financial and strategic label planning, the placement of productions and the positioning of artist biographies with regard to a media presence in the music market, Stephan has since gained valuable experience.

Stephan becomes soon also responsible for projects for other labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, DECCA, Sony, RCA, naïve, Alpha, Wergo and radio stations such as Deutschlandfunk or WDR as a recording producer for a large number of well-known artists. In 2013, he produces both the London Symphony Orchestra for DECCA and the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the then chief conductor Vladimir Juwowski and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja for the French naïve label. Almost every recording for both his own and other labels has been decorated with an international award, including the ECHO and OPUS Klassik, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine Awards, the Diapason d'Or de l'Année, the Choc de Classica, the ICMA, the Opus Klassiek, the Limelight Magazine and the Presto Music Award, in addition to countless editor's picks from radio stations and music magazines. 

In 2015, Stephan accepted a permanent position as recording producer and deputy head of the music production department at WDR, Europe's second biggest broadcaster. For more than 3 years, he was responsible for a large number of projects with symphonic and chamber music, crossover and cross-media projects, until he concentrated on his freelance activities again and focused on working for other labels, besides his own. These include productions with the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Harding, the composer Thomas Adès and legendary actor Bruno Ganz, whose last recording (Strauss' melodrama Enoch Arden) he produces shortly before his death. In the same year he takes over the productions with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne and its chief conductor François-Xavier Roth. Besides of a multitude of concert streams, a Schumann and Bruckner symphonies cycle for release on SACD, CD and digital formats are the result of this collaboration which has lasted over 5 years so far. 

The Covid-19 pandemic brings a strong focus on streaming formats with video to bring music to the listeners stucked at home. By the end of the pandemic, Stephan has been responsible for well over 100 streams of various orchestras, ensembles and individual artists and numerous album productions, including the highly acclaimed St. John Passion performed by Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan (as recording and balance engineer), Brahms string sextets with the Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras as well as Schumann's piano quartet and quintet with Isabelle Faust, Anne Katharina Schreiber, Antoine Tamestit, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikow (as recording producer). 

Stephan has always been a welcome guest at conferences and roundtables, in radio programs and video formats as an expert in the music industry and recording studio technology. His enthusiasm for multi-channel surround formats and experience with immersive recording techniques such as Dolby Atmos also make him a popular lecturer. Stephan was a training partner of the ard.zdf Medienakademie Nuremberg for several years and as such has trained many colleagues in these areas.

He has been living near Cologne with his family since 2013.