Classe Audio SSP-300 owner manual Advanced Surround Array THX Music Mode

Advanced Surround Array™

THX Music Mode

The people at THX have also found a solution to a problem that dogged high performance multichannel systems for years: the apparent conflict between optimal music and movie setups.

You see, movies are mixed in highly standardized environments,with even spaced surround speakers in an array designed to provide a diffuse, enveloping soundfield. Their goal is to draw you into the movie on the screen. If the surround sound tempts you to look over your shoulder, the system has failed: it has reminded you that you are safe in your living room rather than “in” the movie you are watching.

By contrast, most multichannel music is mixed with a single pair of surround speakers aimed directly at the listener from behind. Many music mixers deliberately place particular instruments or musicians in these locations, and want you to feel as though you are “in the middle of the band.” Thus, a diffuse, non-localizable soundfield is not what you might like for the most accurate reproduction of the musical producer’s intent.

THX Ultra solves this apparent dilemma by the innovative use of a special surround array that can provide either highly diffuse surround sound (for movies) or highly localizable surround sound (for music), without having to reposition any loudspeakers. The Advanced Speaker Array™ places a pair of surround speakers to the sides of the listener, and another pair directly behind the listener (and as close to each other as practical). Through the use of sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP), this array can create the audible illusion of either many speakers surrounding you on all sides, or only a single pair of speakers behind you and spread apart as you might normally expect.

By using the technology in ASA (described above), the THX Music mode optimizes the performance of the speakers in the system for multichannel music – whether found on a concert video DVD, a DVD-Audio disc, or a multichannel SACD disc.

When in THX Music mode, ASA creates the illusion of a single pair of surround speakers located at ±30° from directly behind the primary listening position. This simulates the most common configuration found in multichannel music recording studios, and provides the best-possible recreation of the experience the music producer had when mixing the recording.

There are other changes as well (for example, the Re-Equalization circuit is not employed, since the music was not mixed with large movie theaters in mind) – but the bottom line is that the THX Music mode does a terrific job of optimizing the performance of your system for multichannel music reproduction, with the touch of a button.

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