THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at George Lucas's company Lucasfilm in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, would be accurately reproduced in the best venues. THX was named after Holman's initials, with the "X" standing for "crossover"[2] or "experiment". The name is also an homage to Lucas's first film, THX 1138 (1971). Deep Note was created by Holman's co-worker James A. Moorer.
THX is a quality assurance system, not a recording technology. All sound recording formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, DTS, SDDS) or analog (Dolby Stereo, Ultra Stereo), can be reproduced in a THX system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film 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, non-parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise ("ensures noise from air conditioning units and projection equipment does not mask the subtle effects in a movie's soundtrack").[3]
On June 12, 2002, THX was spun off as a separate company from Lucasfilm[4] and sold to sound card manufacturer Creative Technology Limited, which held a 60% share of the company.[5] Under Creative Technology, the company developed several further innovations, such as the first THX-certified audio card for computers, the Sound Blaster Audigy 2. In 2016, THX was acquired by video game hardware company Razer Inc.[1][6]
History
Tomlinson Holman, a skilled audio engineer and scientist largely responsible for the design of the theater, had become an employee of Lucasfilm in 1980. In the process of enhancing the setup for the new Sprocket Systems theater, Holman and Lucas invented a complex system that arranged speakers to best fit the architectural space within the theater. Using an intricate crossover network that integrated equipment with the room's unique acoustics, it became perhaps the best quality system anyone could remember hearing. Sprocket Systems mixed the Return of the Jedi sound in the room, the first Lucasfilm production mixed in Northern California. Visiting filmmakers and studio executives were astounded at what they heard. Jim Kessler, who hired Holman, thought of calling the system "Tomlinson Holman's Crossover", or, as originally abbreviated, "XVR". He then changed the "VR" to "TH", but he realized that was the name for George Lucas's first film, THX 1138, and found that would be a fitting name. They eventually changed the "X"'s meaning to "experiment".[7]
Four movie theaters in the United States fully installed THX sound systems, becoming the first THX certified theaters. To introduce the new system, James A. Moorer created an ear-catching sound called the Deep Note.[8] THX was dedicated on May 20, 1983, and the first trailer and Deep Note premiered on time with the release of Return of the Jedi in theaters five days later. It was billed as the first advance in the motion picture loudspeaker systems since 1948.[9]
In 1990, Lucasfilm unveiled the Home THX Audio System at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.[10] That year, a demo LaserDisc dubbed Wow! was unveiled. It featured various clips from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Willow.[11] Three years later in 1993, The Abyss was released on LaserDisc, making it the first time THX was used on that device.[12] In 1995, the Star Wars trilogy became the first THX certified VHS release.[13] In 1997, Twister became the first digitally mastered THX release on the new DVD format.[14]
In early 2002, it was announced that Lincoln became the first auto company to offer THX-certified premium car audio systems. A concept sound system for the Lincoln Blackwood showcased the potential for in-car multi-channel surround sound, demonstrated at the THX booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The license ensured that high-performance audio systems in Lincoln vehicles met the exacting sound quality and performance standards of its new THX Ultra Premium Car Audio program, beginning with the 2003 Lincoln LS, which was introduced later that year.[15]
THX separated from Lucasfilm and became an independent company in June 2002. The company's headquarters continued in Marin County, California, with offices in Burbank and plan for international expansion. It expanded into gaming and car audio systems. On the professional front, THX planned to continue the expansion of its theatrical certification programs as it became more involved in digital cinema.[4]
On September 30, 2003, THX announced its seal of approval for video game audio. Electronic Arts became the first company to achieve the game certification. This helped improve game sound, measuring the credibility of games at a time when the industry became important to the entertainment market. Five games by Electronic Arts, including Need for Speed: Underground, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King carried logos on their box and pre-game trailers.[16] In 2020, THX Certified Game Mode was introduced, with enhanced contrast and color, and reduced input lag, and greater accuracy to the producers' intentions.[17][18] It has judder and smear reduction, meaning that the picture remained crisp with a quick rise time between dark-to-light transitions.[19] On August 3, TCL Technology revealed the first television to include THX Certified Game Mode, a 6-Series TCL Roku TV.[20]
A 3D product certification called THX 3D Display premiered in 2010. The first 3D television to feature this technology is the LG Infinia PX950 Plasma HDTV series. To earn the new THX 3D Display Certification, the PX950 passed more than 400 laboratory tests evaluating left and right eye images for color accuracy, cross-talk, viewing angles, and video processing performance. The PX950 had to pass THX certification for picture quality in 2D, which is required for THX 3D certification. Viewers can select THX 2D or 3D cinema modes for 2D or 3D movie experiences from broadcast sources and Blu-ray discs.[22] Four new THX-certified 3D JVC projectors were unveiled during this time. These were the Reference Series DLA-RS60 and DLA-RS50, marketed by JVC's Professional Products Company, and the Precision Series DLA-X9 and DLA-X7.[23]
In early 2013, THX unveiled a new app called THX Tune-Up in time for Super Bowl, available on App Store and Google Play. It was billed as the company's first mobile app.[24]
On March 14, 2013, THX filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging patent infringement, Bloomberg L.P. prior to a federal court in Northern California.[25]
THX expanded to China in 2014 with new offices in Beijing and a partnership with China Film Group Corporation to redefine the cinema experience. The first THX Certified China Giant Screen (CGS) auditoriums opened Shanghai in September.[26] In December 2014, THX teamed up with Warren Theatres, opening a large theater complex opened in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on December 23. Each of the 18 auditoriums in this theater was THX certified and two new Grand Infinity Auditoriums were introduced. They were designed by Bill Warren to revolutionize the large format movie-going experience. These auditoriums featured THX Certification, patented deep curved screens, 64-channel Dolby Atmos sound and the first 4K laser projector in the United States.[27]
The company was acquired by Razer Inc. in October 2016.[1]
The first THX-certified laptop was released in 2017, the Razer Blade Pro.[28] THX introduced Spatial Audio in 2018, a new positional audio solution for an immersive 360-degree sound experience through headphones and speakers.[29] The technology was used on the Kraken gaming headset for simulated 7.1 surround sound. These headphones were included with a Spatial Audio app. This would be later used on Windows 10 devices.[30]
On May 2, 2018, it was announced that over 200 Cinemark XD locations in the United States and Latin America would feature a THX sound system. These auditoriums featured enormous wall-to-wall screens, 2D and 3D digital projection, immersive, surround sound, premium seats with Luxury Lounger electric recliners, and THX Certification.[31] Both companies had first announced the partnership one year prior in 2017.[32] The first THX Ultimate Cinema debuted at Regency Westwood Village in Los Angeles in 2019. This theater provided exhibitors with a branded and differentiated PLF offering that included projection technology from Cinionic, and an immersive audio system, acoustics, and auditorium specifications that met THX certification standards.[33]
In September 2020, Walmart stores began to sell Gateway laptops and tablets, which were tuned by THX, ensuring brighter contrast with more rich vibrant screen colors. They combined style, performance, and value in a wide range of products for consumers, students, and creators. The laptops featured THX Spatial Audio that delivered an authentic 7.1 surround experience through built-in speakers and attached headphones.[34]
THX premiered its first consumer electronic product called the Onyx in 2021, a mobile headphone DAC and amplifier using THX AAA technology.[35]
Applications
Norris Cinema Theatre, on the University of Southern California campus, is where THX was first developed and installed.
THX Certified Game logo is commonly used on THX-certified video games.
THX has created a certification process for additional products including home audio, home theater, video, and automotive sound components and products. THX certification extends to home audio receivers, speakers, desktop systems, soundbars, acoustic materials, microphones, and HDMI cables.[37]
THX Certified Ultra
THX Certified Ultra products are for larger home theaters, 3,000cuft (85m3) in size, with a viewing distance of 12 foot (3.7m) or greater from the screen.
THX Certified Select
THX Certified Select products are for medium-sized rooms, up to 2,000cuft (57m3) in size, with a 10–12 foot (3.0–3.7m) viewing distance from the screen.
THX Certified Compact
THX Certified Compact products for smaller sized rooms, up to 2,000cuft (57m3) in size, with an 8 foot (2.4m) viewing distance from the screen.
THX Certified Dominus
THX Certified Dominus products are for expansive home theater spaces, 6,500cuft (180m3) in size, with a 20 foot (6.1m) viewing distance from the screen.
I/S Plus Systems
THX's I/S Plus systems include an AV Receiver + Speaker Bundle and are certified to fill a small home theater or dorm room where the viewing distance from the screen is 6–8 feet (1.8–2.4m). These THX certified home theater in a box systems are so far exclusively made by Onkyo.[38] and Enclave Audio.[39]
Multimedia products
THX Certified Multimedia Products are designed and engineered for PC gaming and multimedia on the desktop.
THX Certified Optimode and Optimizer
THX Certified DVD and video displays (plasma display and LCD or LED flat panels and projectors) including THX Optimode and Optimizer which allows users to see a program or the movie as originally intended. Some tests required the use of special "blue filter glasses," which would either be included with the Optimizer disc, or sold separately on the THX website at the time.[40]
The first DVD release to include the THX Optimode is 20th Century Fox's Fight Club, which was released on June 6, 2000.[41]
THX's mascot is a robot named Tex, created by John Lasseter, the former head of Pixar Animation Studios. He first appeared in the original Tex trailer (simply known as Tex 1), which premiered in theaters with Independence Day on July 3, 1996, in which he fixes up the THX logo. A second trailer, Tex 2: Moo Can (often called just simply Tex 2 or THX Moo Can), in which he uses a moo can to perform the Deep Note, premiered in theaters on November 26, 1997, with Alien Resurrection.[42] Less than a decade later on June 9, 2006, the Tex 3: Action (often called just simply Tex 3) trailer, in which he escapes from a car, premiered with the release of Cars. These trailers were later seen on prints of early Pixar animated films on DVD including Toy Story, A Bug's Life (post-2003 only), Toy Story 2 (excluding the 2-Pack & Stand-alone DVDs, which have the Broadway trailer instead), Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and Cars. The Incredibles is the only exception to this, as the original DVD releases have the Cavalcade trailer instead. The Tex trailer can be spotted on the majority of Pixar titles, except for Monsters, Inc.. The Moo Can trailer can also be spotted on these Pixar titles, but it also appears on some 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment DVDs, such as Speed 2: Cruise Control and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Tex 3: Action, unlike the previous two trailers, was only spotted on two titles, those being District B13 and Brave Story. The trailers are also available on various THX demo discs. A fourth trailer featuring Tex titled Tex vs. the Robot, in which Tex and another robot named Bob try to place an orb into a socket in a spaceship, premiered on THX's YouTube channel on June 25, 2020, as a demo for the company's Spatial Audio technology.[43]
The Deep Note was partially previewed on the opening track of the 1983 album The Digital Domain: A Demonstration, where it was included among sound effects that were combined with the Deep Note itself. The Deep Note debuted later that same year at the premiere of Return of the Jedi in Los Angeles.[45] It also appears at the beginning of the fifth track to Asia's third album Astra, 'Countdown to Zero.'
A movie theater, cinema, or cinema hall, also known as a movie house, picture house, picture theater or simply theater, is a business that contains auditoria for viewing films for public entertainment. Most are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing tickets.
Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971 in San Rafael, California, though most of the company's operations were moved to San Francisco in 2005. It has been a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Studios since 2012 and is best known for creating and producing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as its leadership in developing special effects, sound, and computer animation for films.
Tomlinson M. Holman is an American film theorist, audio engineer, and inventor of film technologies, notably the Lucasfilm's THX sound system. He developed the world's first 10.2 sound system.
IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio and steep stadium seating, with the 1.43:1 ratio format being available only in few selected locations.
A home cinema, also called a home theater or theater room, is a home entertainment audio-visual system that seeks to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer electronics-grade video and audio equipment and is set up in a room or backyard of a private home. Some studies show that films are rated better and generate more intense emotions when watched in a movie theater, but convenience is a major appeal for home cinemas. In the 1980s, home cinemas typically consisted of a movie pre-recorded on a LaserDisc or VHS tape; a LaserDisc Player or VCR; and a heavy, bulky large-screen cathode ray tube TV set, although sometimes CRT projectors were used instead. In the 2000s, technological innovations in sound systems, video player equipment and TV screens and video projectors have changed the equipment used in home cinema set-ups and enabled home users to experience a higher-resolution screen image, improved sound quality and components that offer users more options. The development of Internet-based subscription services means that 2020s-era home theatre users do not have to commute to a video rental store as was common in the 1980s and 1990s.
Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener. Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to surround sound, theater sound systems commonly had three screen channels of sound that played from three loudspeakers located in front of the audience. Surround sound adds one or more channels from loudspeakers to the side or behind the listener that are able to create the sensation of sound coming from any horizontal direction around the listener.
The Empire, Leicester Square is a cinema currently operated by Cineworld on the north side of Leicester Square, London, United Kingdom.
Century Theatres is a movie theater chain that operates many multiplexes in the western United States, primarily in California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. In its later years, it had expanded into the inter-mountain states, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, Alaska and parts of the Midwestern United States. Founded in 1941, the chain was headquartered in San Rafael, California until it was acquired by Cinemark Theatres from Plano, Texas in 2006. Many now-Cinemark-owned theaters continue to operate under the Century brand.
Cinemark Holdings, Inc. is an American movie theater chain that started operations in 1984 and since then it has operated theaters with hundreds of locations throughout the Americas. It is headquartered in Plano, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Cinemark is a leader in the theatrical exhibition industry with 521 theatres and 5,855 screens in the U.S. and Latin America as of June 30, 2022. It is also the largest movie theatre chain in Brazil, with a 30 percent market share.
The Deep Note is the sound trademark of THX, being a distinctive synthesized crescendo that glissandos from a relatively narrow frequency spread to a broader frequency spread. It was created by James A. Moorer, a former employee of Lucasfilm's Computer Division in late 1982. The sound is used on trailers for THX-certified movie theaters, home video releases, video games, and in-car entertainment systems.
Lexicon is an American company that engineers, manufactures, and markets audio equipment as a brand of Harman International Industries. The company was founded in 1971 with headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and offices in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was acquired by Harman in 1993.
The Audio Signal Processor (ASP) is a large-scale digital signal processor developed by James A. Moorer at Lucasfilm's The Droid Works. Moorer programmed a number of digital signal processing algorithms that were used in major motion picture features. Sounds processed by the ASP were used in the THX logo's Deep Note, Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and others. ASP provided the technological basis for the SoundDroid.
The SoundDroid is an early digital audio workstation designed by a team of engineers led by James A. Moorer at Lucasfilm between 1980 and 1987. It was a hard-disk–based, nonlinear audio editor developed on the Audio Signal Processor (ASP), a large-scale digital signal processor for real-time, multichannel equalization and audio mixing. The ASP was connected to a then-new SUN/1 workstation, and with a physical console, could replace multi-slider mixers and provide new tools for audio spotting, editing, and mixing.
Onkyo Corporation is a Japanese consumer electronics company, specializing in premium home cinema and audio equipment, including AV receivers, surround sound speakers and portable devices. The company started under the name of Osaka Denki Onkyo K.K. in 1946. The company's umbrella included Integra and Integra Research divisions as well as the main Onkyo brand. It became Onkyo Home Entertainment Corporation after purchasing Pioneer Corporation. The company became bankrupt in 2022; the Onkyo brand now does business under joint ownership by Sharp Corporation and Voxx International.
Ashly Audio is an American audio equipment company founded by Bill Thompson and Dave Malloy in 1974. Ashly produces over 40 products, including amplifiers, mixers, equalizers, digital and analog audio processors, for the recording and live sound industries. Ashly Audio is a division of Canadian corporate group Exertis | JAM.
Warren Theatres was a movie theater chain based in Wichita, Kansas, United States. While the company was founded by Bill Warren, he sold ownership of most of the Warren Theatres locations to Regal Entertainment Group in 2017. The sale excluded two theaters that were in development and the Palace Theatre in Springfield, Missouri.
John Morgan Eargle was an Oscar- and Grammy-winning audio engineer and a musician. He was the Chief Engineer for Delos International, author of seminal textbooks on audio, a consultant for 31 years at JBL, and past president and fellow of the Audio Engineering Society.
Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels, allowing sounds to be interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal nor vertical limitations. Following the release of Atmos for the cinema market, a variety of consumer technologies have been released under the Atmos brand, using in-ceiling and up-firing speakers.
Auro 11.1 is one of the cinematic speaker layouts of the Auro-3D format, invented in 2005 by Wilfried Van Baelen.
Auro-3D is an immersive 3D audio format developed by the Belgium-based company Auro Technologies.
1 2 "THX Deep Note". THX. Retrieved July 13, 2023. THX Deep Note was composed by Lucasfilm sound engineer Dr. James 'Andy' Moorer and was screened at the start of the 1983 premiere of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.
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