DTS and 7.1: Creative Audigy 2 Platinum Pro

THX, A Quality Standard

Finally, the last major brand famous in movies and on the home movie scene - THX. This product of Lucasfilm does not offer a new type of sound track encoding (it can use all of them) but imposes standards of quality for output from movie theaters. A technical and commercial approach that is interesting but risky, because quality and mass market rarely go together. Originally, home equipment labeled THX was considered prestige hardware, often designed for large rooms of the kind that are rarely found in the average apartment. They had captured a niche market, an upscale one of course but a pretty restricted one. The THX label developed in several classes of certification so there are multimedia products that bear this label, as there are Creative Audigy 2 cards (including the ZS, of course!).

THX certification ensures that when the sound travels through your THX system, it will have been subjected to various processes suited to home reproduction, such as equalization to ensure that the output destined for movie screen sound systems was adapted to direct output, and monophonic decorrelation of the surround signal. The bass was managed used high-pass and low-pass filters, peaks were compressed in the base, and time delays were managed between the various speakers based on their position in the listening room.

In order to enable better adaptation to your broadcasting system, you now have a THX console with two screens. The first is for basic choices, with an indication of the connections to be made, the second to precisely calibrate the output on the basis of the acoustic system used. You indicate to the system the position of the various speakers and their distance in relation to the listening area so that it can manage the delay between speakers. This new tool has the great merit of clarity to optimize output based on your own personal setup.