Would you mind introducing yourself, your position in the company and your role in working with THX in game settings?
I’m Dr. Mark Tuffy and I’m the Director of Games at THX. In my current position, I run all of our video game related activities, including our game and studio certification programs and the development of new technologies, such as Neural-THX Surround.

Why has THX now expanded its role in the gaming audio market beyond specifications only?
THX is always associated as being a quality brand, bringing a high level of performance in every category we touch. But, we also spend a lot of time looking at ways to improve how content is created and experienced by the end-user. Beyond setting the performance benchmarks for audio and video quality, we also want to create technologies that make the gaming experience more immersive and interactive. That’s why we’re working on technologies such as Neural-THX Surround, THX Ground Plane and Slot Speaker.

THX has a huge presence in the theatre and home theatre markets, how does gaming audio differ from those markets?
The bigger question is how the home theatre and gaming markets are similar. THX has actually done quite a bit of research into the behaviour of the gamers—where they play, how much they play, console setup, etc. Twenty five years ago, the Atari 2600 was relegated to the kid’s room. Now, the gaming console is front-and-center, playing an integral role in the home theatre experience. In fact, according to the study that THX conducted with Nielsen Research, 40 percent of all American households now have at least one console. And the majority of these are located in a living or family room.

Close to half of those surveyed indicated that they use their game consoles to watch movies in addition to playing games. However, what surprised us the most was the number of gamers who currently own multi-channel surround sound systems. The Nielsen study revealed that more than 54 percent of PS3 and 48 percent of Xbox 360 consoles are currently connected to multi-channel (5.1 or greater) home theater systems.

Can you give our readers a quick overview of exactly what Neural-THX Surround is and how it can change the gaming experience?
Today, most video game consoles are limited to presenting game soundtracks in 5.1. The problem? Regardless of where you put the two speakers, they won’t give you a true 360-degree sound experience. So, we started looking at new ways of placing sound elements all around thesurround gamer so they get the full benefit of a game’s audio engine, making the experience more immersive. The result of this work is Neural-THX Surround, which is a new technology jointly developed by THX and our partner Neural Audio. The Neural-THX Surround technology is inserted into the game’s audio engine, allowing it to carry two extra channels of sound behind the listener (to the rear of the listening position). Instead of the audio engine running on 5.1, it runs on 7.1. The technology encodes this 7.1 soundtrack down to 5.1 for playback by the console (this means no need to modify the console). On the playback side the receiver extracts the 7.1 back out again. For gamers, Neural-THX Surround places sound effects, dialogue and other sounds elements all around them in real time. It makes the game experience more interactive and immersive.

When I met with THX representatives at CES, it was mentioned that Neural-THX could eventually become the standard for gaming audio. What is the process that is undertaken to work with developers, PC hardware and console manufactures to integrate this technology? How does this technology differ from the Dol...