(Not sure what forum this fits, but it is very exciting news. For upmixing music to 5.1 this is the only thing better than Penteo)
A First Listen - DejaVu 5.1 up music mixer and Steely Dan’s Aja
I recently attended the public debut of a new real-time stereo to surround up mix algorithm designed specifically for music by the name of DejaVu. The event was playing Steely Dan’s album Aja through the DejaVu real time up mixer. This new algorithm has been developed by Frank Foti (a well known audio processing guru in the broadcast world). The name ‘DejaVu’ refers to the phenomenon where listening to a familiar song creates the phenomenon of “hearing it for the first time” since the up mix reveals details that were previously hidden in the mix.
First some historical context. Many here will recall a lot of excitement when the Penteo up mix process was demoed back in about 2006. It was, at that time, a process oriented approach that yielded impressive results. The original process required considerable manual effort to optimize the source material prior running it through the up mixer. Penteo upmixed content played an important role in the first FM surround broadcasts in the early summer of 2007 at WZLX in Boston
https://www.radioworld.com/miscellaneous/wzlx-programming-a-surround-station.
A real-time version of Penteo was demonstrated at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in 2009. Ultimately, the company opted to abandon real time applications, and instead produced a pro-tools plugin. It is still a very well regarded algorithm, though somewhat variable depending on the quality of the source material.
Beginning in 2005 this author was lucky to hear a lot of surround material (both native surround and manual Penteo up mixes made by John Wheeler, Penteo’s founder) as part of demonstrations of the technology that ultimately became MPEG Surround streaming. There was hope at the time that FM digital HD radio might embrace surround transmission, but alas that never came to be, other than the WZLX demo mentioned above. However, I became hooked on surround music, as well as aware that some of the up-mixed material was better than some of the commercial 5.1 releases. Ever since that time I have chased the mirage of a quality up mix algorithm in the form of a real time up-mix device that would reliably work on a range of material. As part of this quest, I have done considerable research into the origins of various up-mix algorithms, especially Penteo. I even found the open source pieces that were part of the original Penteo algorithm. I even considered hiring a friend to port that over to a DSP platform for me. I also learned that its weak point is subtle differences in the Left and Right source; for example different tape bias settings between the two channels, tape splices, head azimuth, etc,.
A few years back I heard through various contacts that Frank Foti was discretely showing something along these lines to a number of well regarded people in the music industry. I regularly put my ears to the rail listening for this possible technology coming down the track. In the fall of 2021 I became aware that there was something coming together.
Finally I got word of the public debut of a technology to be released by Foti’s new company, Syndicate of Sounds -
https://syndicateofsounds.com/. The debut was to be at a club in Cleveland called The Music Box on February 4th. I immediately arranged to travel to Cleveland to attend the demo. Immersive DejaVu album sessions will now be a monthly attraction at the venue
https://musicboxcle.com/immersive/.
I then contacted Frank and he was kind enough to send me 2 demo clips for me to audition in my home theater, one of them being a song that I had listened to the Penteo version hundreds of times. I was as impressed as I had hoped. I was lucky enough to arrange a meeting with Foti before the event, and got to listen to about an hour’s worth of assorted material at his lab. He also shared with me some stories about his journey to creating this marvel. He shared that after years of experimentation, that he concluded that his goal should be to concentrate on the center channel. That if he could get that locked down image wise, with stability and full fidelity, that the rest would fall into place. He has achieved that. Imaging is rock stable, and channel to channel isolation is exceptional (both aurally and when viewed on a meter panel).
At the Music Box Aja demo I was unable to get tickets anywhere close to the sweet spot. My seat was nearly directly below the left front speaker. The stage was mostly empty except for a few chairs where Frank and the owner of the club led a discussion with Gary Katz (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Katz) the producer of Steely Dan’s Aja, shared stories about his career and about the band. Once the album began it sounded like the band was there on the stage, with certain percussion and backup instruments floating around me with great detail. They sounded like they were part of the performance playing on the stage, but with a spaciality that made them so much easier to perceive. Very similar to some of my favorite surround mixes, but created in real time from a stereo source.
Seated next to me at the same table were a number of big Steely Dan fans. I struck up a conversation with a couple who had come to the event from Pittsburgh. They were long time Steely Dan fans, and had recently listened to Aja several times. Before the event began, I told them a bit of what I knew about the technology and its creator, and would hear. I also what the DejaVus name represented. After the album I spoke to him during the intermission and I asked if he had heard anything new, and he said “yes”. Lost in the mix no longer.
After Aja additional material was demoed.
Stay tuned (as we radio folks like to say) for an Interview with Frank Foti.
Full disclosure - the author is a former employee of Syndicate of Sounds co-founder Frank Foti. He has no current affiliation with Foti or Syndicate of Sounds. The opinions expressed are his own.
