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How The THX Noise Was Created
devilsbrigade writes "The blog MusicThing is running an interesting interview with Andy Moorer. Mr. Moorer is the man who created the sound called Deep Note, now heard in every THX-enabled movie theatre. The interview is originally from last year, but the tech-heavy discussion is still a timeless analysis of a great sound." From the article: "The score consists of a C program of about 20,000 lines of code. The output of this program is not the sound itself, but is the sequence of parameters that drives the oscillators on the ASP. That 20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz. The oscillators were not simple - they had 1-pole smoothers on both amplitude and frequency. At the beginning, they form a cluster from 200 to 400 Hz. I randomly assigned and poked the frequencies so they drifted up and down in that range."
except when you are in the digital domain.
If only mod points went to 11...
Volume has to be the most irritating problem in a movie theater. Granted, the 14 year old lackeys don't give a rat's ass what they set it at, but if enough people complain through the THX survey, those 14 year old lackeys will be the most educated in town on the definition of 'audiophile.' THX will work hard to preserve its reputation vs. DTS and competitors. They'll come down hard on theater management, who will have no choice but to train and weed out failing staff. With keeping a uniform or theater clean, or keeping food safety in mind, a theater's reputation spreads. So too does "that theater's too loud, let's go to the one across town."
I had no idea until now that THX had a public survey. I'll have to use it.