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THX
American audio company / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
THX is the trade name of a high-fidelity sound reproduction standard. It was used for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems.
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Industry | Audio |
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Founded | May 20, 1983; 41 years ago (1983-05-20) |
Headquarters | San Rafael, California, United States |
Website | www |
THX stands for "Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment". THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at George Lucas's company Lucasfilm founded in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, would be accurately reproduced in the best venues.
The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format. All sound formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby SR, Ultra-Stereo), can be "shown in THX." THX is mainly a quality assurance system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any movie soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer. THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, no parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise.