AES Section Meeting Reports

San Francisco - January 28, 2009

Meeting Topic: Penteo, LLC "Stereo-to-5.1 Conversion Process"

Moderator Name: David v.R. Bowles

Speaker Name: John Wheeler (owner of Penteo, LLC)

Other business or activities at the meeting: Asked non-members to join; spoke of future AES presentations on both national and local levels

Meeting Location: Polarity Post, San Francisco, CA

Summary

Penteo, LLC (www.penteosurround.com), based in the Bay Area, has developed an innovative system of processes that cleanly converts stereo mixes of music, movie, and TV soundtracks directly into superior-quality 5.1 surround sound. At the core of this system is a proprietary stereo "panorama slicing" algorithm which creates a much cleaner 5.1 experience than anything else on the market today.

Penteo provides an up-mastering service, most recently processing six 1970's music pieces for the upcoming Warner Brothers/Paramount/Fox/Universal $120M blockbuster "Watchmen". They presented a few of these pieces both in their original stereo formats and after undergoing the Penteo conversion.

Penteo's algorithm is also being incorporated into real-time units for the production of live television entertainment and sports programming, essentially turning every pan-pot on a stereo board into a 5-point joystick.

Penteo was founded by long-time Bay Area resident, computer programmer and Audio Emmy winner John Wheeler, formerly the Core Network Architect at EDnet, the Skywalker Ranch-founded pro digital audio network.

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