Foti’s New Surround Sound Upmixing Technology Transforms Music Mixes into Enveloping Surround Sound for Applications Such as Live Sound and More

Syndicate of Sounds, announced today its new Déjà Vu Upmixer, created to transform two-channel audio mixes into enveloping and exciting surround sound experiences.

There is plenty of content available in surround sound. However, since the demise of physical media like SACD and DVD-Audio, 5.1 content for music is hard to find, with the majority of music recordings only available in stereo, leaving music fans in the dust, until now.

Déjà Vu converts a stereo audio track into a surround audio track using a linear process that preserves natural sonic integrity, frequency response, and audio level, while faithfully supporting the music’s original production characteristics. Unlike other upmixing methods, Déjà Vu does not rely on perceptual tricks like synthesized channel steering, phase modification, reverb, dynamic level adjustment, or time delay as mechanisms to create surround, thus avoiding resultant artifacts, inconsistent surround representation, and degradation of the overall audio performance. In fact, Déjà Vu-processed content sounds like it was originally mixed in 5.1 thanks to artifact-free processing, moving stereo mixes into the immersive era.

“After years of research, development, and critical listening, I was able to create a faithful representation of immersive/surround audio from a two-channel or stereo audio track. Listening to material though this upmixer unmasks elements of the recording that could not be heard before…it’s like hearing your music for the first time and falling in love with it all over again,” says Frank Foti, founder of Omnia Audio and executive chairman of Telos Alliance. “That’s why we call it Déjà Vu.”

The applications for Déjà Vu technology are endless and span many markets in the commercial and consumer AV channels. For example, museums can now offer interactive art exhibits in surround sound instead of stereo for a more immersive audience experience; live venues or Houses of Worship can stream to patrons in surround sound for playback on a surround-sound audio system or via surround-sound headphones, and much more.

“When Frank played music that we produced after upmixing it using Déjà Vu, I was fascinated. Hearing it in surround sound and listening to this content in a new way was fabulous,” says Gary Katz, Steely Dan Producer.