THX™

THX is a trade name of a high-fidelity sound reproduction standard for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems. THX stands for Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment. THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at George Lucas's company Lucasfilm in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi would be accurately reproduced in the best venues.

All sound formats, whether digital (Dolby® Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby SR, Ultra-Stereo™), can be "shown in THX" as it a quality assurance system, not a proprietary format. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed on a THX certified stage will sound as close as possible to the intentions of mixers.

THX also provides certified stages and theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of stages and auditoriums entail 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.

The distinctive crescendo used in the THX trailers is known as the "Deep Note".

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html. It uses material from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX.