Audio Video News

THX today announced a new end-to-end “positional audio solution” said to be flexible enough to support emerging immersive audio formats, open standards, and legacy content across mobile, PC, and consumer electronics devices.

The THX Spatial Audio Platform comprises components for content creation and a “robust set of features to optimize audio playback experiences over a wide range of consumer devices, all of which can be seamlessly integrated into existing content creation and distribution workflows,” according to the company.

THX is making components of the platform available to ecosystem partners independently or as a complete end-to-end audio solution.

Platform capabilities include:
• Content creation plugins that produce immersive audio in ambisonics and object-based formats and seamlessly integrate into industry standard audio design tools, eliminating the need to learn new tools and master new proprietary audio formats.
• Support for MPEG-H encoding, decoding, and transport of audio technology for next generation television broadcasts and streaming video.
• Rendering engine that spatializes ambisonic, object-based, and legacy content through headphones and speakers across all consumer devices.
• Tuning and device optimization by measuring and calibrating audio playback to deliver a high-quality audio experience over headphones and speakers.
• Personalized audio profiles using Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) optimized for the unique physics of the listener’s hearing.

THX and Qualcomm are conducting joint demonstrations of the THX Spatial Audio Platform at Mobile World Congress 2018 to show how content creators, broadcasters, and streaming media companies can use the platform to deliver immersive audio experiences on mobile devices.

The platform is described as a cost-effective solution for deploying next generation high-fidelity audio entertainment to consumers on many devices.

“THX has a rich history of ensuring high fidelity audio and visual experiences for consumers and as technology continues to evolve, so do we,” said Ruben Mookerjee, THX’s senior vice president of product at THX. “We look forward to working closely with Qualcomm to bring next generation entertainment experiences to life with THX Spatial Audio using MPEG-H.”

THX Ltd. was founded by legendary filmmaker George Lucas in 1983 to set standards that ensure entertainment experiences in the cinema and in a home setting fulfill what a movie director intended.

For more information, visit thx.com.