Apple Reportedly Hires Audio Pioneer Tomlinson Holman

[ziti]

Hmmm.

Tom Holman is a marketing hack, and not an engineer. THX was a bad joke on the movie business, and you'll note has mostly disappeared. Most of Holman's ideas are long since discredited - read Dr. Floyd Toole's book surround sound where he guts Holman like a fish.

Let's see now: he's a full professor with tenure in the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC (http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2008/ieee-honors-viterbi.htm) and the School of Cinematic Arts, has won an Academy Award; Fellowships in AES, BKSTS, and SMPTE; the Masuru Ibuka award of IEEE, medals from AES and SMPTE, etc. Seven U.S. patents too. So not "not an engineer."

And while Toole was in charge at Harman they made lots of different models of THX products over the years, from their highest end to low. Toole's book claims Holman can do no right, but then WHY DID THEY DO IT FOR YEARS? And those things, five of them, are both loudspeaker and electronic oriented--surely they can't all be wrong, can they?

 

[pxb-audio]

So....what are you saying, really? Is this theory something beyond the idea of setting up speakers to fit best in a room (like with Audyssey)? Are you suggesting putting this into the soundtrack instead of people simply setting up their room properly?

I'm saying that you need the room set up properly, and you need a render-independent way to produce and store the audio. You watch your movie and listen to your music on the 2 speakers you have today. Tomorrow you get another 2, or 4 or 6 speakers, and you can use them with the same material.

Hollywood then does not have to re-release Die Hard 5 in 20.4 audio, you just use the old movie you have with an ambisonic soundtrack, and continue to enjoy it. Of course, there's a bit of cash tied up in re-releases, not to mention training audio monkeys to not think in stereo, or even worse to train coders of audio apps to stop thinking in stereo or n.n audio.

So it works, it's available, and there are even tools for free. Getting people to use it when Mr 5.1 & 10.2 is hired by the gang who make the best audio computer is going to be another matter. That's why I mentioned it - the more people who know and who investigate it the better. BTW you can also render to HRTF for headphone listening and Xtalk cancellation systems...