Penteo Pro 16 Upmix/Downmix Plug-In

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Thanks for the lead cuz I love looking at & learning about the various upmix tools like this. But, Sheesh! At $1500 plus the DAW for it to work in really makes it out of reach for a home experimenter.
Yes, it‘s f****** expensive!
I do mixing about 20 years now.
Therefore I have several tools + outboard equipment. Penteo is also only an experiment, as it is too much to pay for fake surround titles.
I have the demo that will expire on black friday.
Till then I try to make upmixes of my favorite music...some of them ;).
As with every upmixer.....sometimes it works really good, sometimes it‘s not an upgrade.
I also have Studio One from Presonus and they offer multitracks. I may look into and then it is possible to do real surround mixes.
 
But, Sheesh! At $1500 plus the DAW for it to work in really makes it out of reach for a home experimenter.

Just to confirm: The Penteo 16 upmixer software is currently $499. You can use Reaper DAW at $60 (for personal use). Penteo has a fully functional 14 day trial (but you need an iLok USB key, $35 on Amazon). Reaper has a 60 day fully functional trial version.

If there’s enough of us QQers interested maybe we can get a deal for individual, non-commercial use of Penteo at a reasonable discount. We can always ask, right?
 
Black Friday Deal for Penteo -100$

Yes, confirmed by Sophia at Penteo. It starts tomorrow.

Anyone thinking about taking the plunge, tomorrow is the time to go for it.

Hi Jon -

Yes we are having a sale this week! Check out our website after tomorrow!

Warmest regards,

Sophia

ADL Penteo Customer Support
 
Yes, confirmed by Sophia at Penteo. It starts tomorrow.

Anyone thinking about taking the plunge, tomorrow is the time to go for it.

Hi Jon -

Yes we are having a sale this week! Check out our website after tomorrow!

Warmest regards,

Sophia

ADL Penteo Customer Support

This is just up on the Penteo site $399

1574716435754.png
 
The discount ends on 2nd Nov, so still time for those interested to try for free prior with their 14 day trial.

I‘m pretty happy with what I’ve heard so far in my trial. I’m going to buy this week while it’s on sale. I haven’t yet completed my tests but I’ve heard enough to know I would definitely listen to the Penteo upmixes over stereo originals. Of course, some upmixes sound better than others, depending on the stereo mix. Definitely no upmix artefacts at all.

I have a fairly detailed comparison of stereo to quad conversions of same files with Penteo 16 vs SMv2 done by J. Pupster which gives a slight preference to Penteo on most files, even on others.

Biggest advantage for me is Penteo‘s faster than real-time conversion directly to MCH files, no analog capture/conversion required.
 
Quickie question: With the original Penteo upmixer, the rears were more or less a horseshoe configuration of the original stereo fronts, with some tweaking of the wrap-around being adjustable. I'm guessing that Penteo still does the wrap around stereo upmixing, but does it also offer a mode where strictly out of phase content goes to the rear channels?
 
Well, I'm all in. I bought the iLok3, got the eval version of Reaper, then sprang for the Penteo. Fired it all up and BOOM-CRASH!!!

It figures. I created the iLok account, added the Penteo license to it, sync'd the whole mess, then started with Garry's excellent tutorial but could only get as far as selecting the FX Chain and the Penteo Plug-in is just not there! All of the other VST3 plug ins on my PC are there, but no Penteo.

I tried rebooting, then reloading the Penteo but it was still nowhere to be found. No errors, no nothing. AARRRGGGHHH!!

Then I tried running Wavelab just to see what would happen. Well, when Wavelab found the plugin, it spit it out:

Penteo Error.jpg


I am not sure if this is because Penteo is not compatible with Wavelab 10, or if there is an issue with the plugin itself. I then emailed Penteo with the issues I am having and will wait for their response.

Anyway, I am now off on a new adventure totally on the wrong foot. All in all it's just another brick in that multichannel wall.....
 
Well, I'm all in. I bought the iLok3, got the eval version of Reaper, then sprang for the Penteo. Fired it all up and BOOM-CRASH!!!

It figures. I created the iLok account, added the Penteo license to it, sync'd the whole mess, then started with Garry's excellent tutorial but could only get as far as selecting the FX Chain and the Penteo Plug-in is just not there! All of the other VST3 plug ins on my PC are there, but no Penteo.

I tried rebooting, then reloading the Penteo but it was still nowhere to be found. No errors, no nothing. AARRRGGGHHH!!

Then I tried running Wavelab just to see what would happen. Well, when Wavelab found the plugin, it spit it out:

View attachment 44244

I am not sure if this is because Penteo is not compatible with Wavelab 10, or if there is an issue with the plugin itself. I then emailed Penteo with the issues I am having and will wait for their response.

Anyway, I am now off on a new adventure totally on the wrong foot. All in all it's just another brick in that multichannel wall.....
Even with the discount the cost is too much for me considering holiday expenses. Oh and needing to spend more $$ on iLok & Reaper. Your latest experience echoes the frustration the 1st time, a few years ago, I experimented with Penteo.

But any way, best of luck now that you are committed to this. Perhaps next note consternation will turn to lucidation!
 
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Even with the discount the cost is too much for me considering holiday expenses. Oh and needing to spend more $$ on iLok & Reaper. Your latest experience echoes the frustration the 1st time, a few years ago, I experimented with Penteo.

But any way, best of luck now that you are committed to this. Perhaps next note consternation will turn to lucidation!

I am thinking that maybe because I have so much music software on my big PC that there might be some conflicts. Since the iLok is transportable, I may try the whole mess on my laptop if I don't hear from them by tomorrow.

It may be a waste in the end, who knows? Hope not. Still, I will look at it as taking "one for the good of the forum" - you know? :phones
 
Well, I'm all in. I bought the iLok3, got the eval version of Reaper, then sprang for the Penteo. Fired it all up and BOOM-CRASH!!!

It figures. I created the iLok account, added the Penteo license to it, sync'd the whole mess, then started with Garry's excellent tutorial but could only get as far as selecting the FX Chain and the Penteo Plug-in is just not there! All of the other VST3 plug ins on my PC are there, but no Penteo.

I tried rebooting, then reloading the Penteo but it was still nowhere to be found. No errors, no nothing. AARRRGGGHHH!!

Then I tried running Wavelab just to see what would happen. Well, when Wavelab found the plugin, it spit it out:

View attachment 44244

I am not sure if this is because Penteo is not compatible with Wavelab 10, or if there is an issue with the plugin itself. I then emailed Penteo with the issues I am having and will wait for their response.

Anyway, I am now off on a new adventure totally on the wrong foot. All in all it's just another brick in that multichannel wall.....

I'm also along for the ride as of today (was very impressed with the Up-mix tryouts!), but will first need to spend more to load onto an NUC for this.

Damn .dlls still flakey after all these years :mad:
 
Jon, did you install Penteo after you added the Penteo license to your iLok Manager and activated it?
 
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I noticed there’s a new Penteo update today. I’m running 2.01 new is 2.02. I haven’t installed new yet.
 
I am thinking that maybe because I have so much music software on my big PC that there might be some conflicts. Since the iLok is transportable, I may try the whole mess on my laptop if I don't hear from them by tomorrow.

It may be a waste in the end, who knows? Hope not. Still, I will look at it as taking "one for the good of the forum" - you know? :phones

Hang in there Jon - I'm sure you will get it working - these VST's can be a real pain as they get installed in various places..

I dont recall where Penteo gets installed

if you havent already, look at the VST tab under Preferences in Reaper and look at the options..
 
Jon, did you install Penteo after you added the Penteo license to your iLok Manager and activated it?

Well, I thought I did, but I don't think it was. What I mean is that I did all of the registering and installing of the iLok3, but I never dragged and dropped the license from the list on the right to the iLok on the left of the iLok app window. I saw that it still said '0 licenses installed' even though I did everything ( I thought), and then I just tried for the hell of it to drag the license over to the iLok and then it said it was installed.

BUT - I didn't do that until I tried to use it. So maybe that's my issue. Like I said I did try to reinstall, but I did not uninstall first. Might be something to try.
I think the Cubase and Wavelab errors were due to incompatibility, as when I opened Sound Forge 13 to do something else, it too popped up with that errormsgbox, and I was told that the plug in was not compatible with Sound Forge.

However, the fact that those 3 programs found the plugin and Reaper did not is a bit odd.
 
Hang in there Jon - I'm sure you will get it working - these VST's can be a real pain as they get installed in various places..

if you havent already, look at the VST tab under Preferences in Reaper and look at the options..

John is the man. I did this:

In Reaper go to Preferences. Plug-ins, VST and add this folder to the VST plug-in paths:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
 
Didn't Work. If I uninstall then reinstall, will that screw up my registration/license?

Penteo Error.jpg
 
certainly looks like penteo didn't install properly - I have reinstalled programs under Ilok numerous times as I move to a new PC, and it wont invalidate the license..
 
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