When I was a college intern, I had the opportunity to work for Tomlinson Holman. You may recognize his initials from "THX" - aka, the Tom Holman Exeriment. Tom is an audio engineering genius and THX helped to define the remarkable, breakthrough experience of Star Wars. It gave audiences a 360-degree sound experience that became the standard in the movie industry.
In the film industry, large sums of money go into the sound engineering aspects of finishing a film. It requires a large sound stage to achieve an effect similar to being in an actual theater.
Tom created a new sound technology - and like what I'm sharing with you today - there was only one real way to experience the full impact and effect of it. He'd sit people in a room full of speakers - the normal surround sound configuration of a home audio theater and play the movie Apocolypse Now. The room rumbled and shook with the thunderous booming of bombs.
It was an intense and impressive experience.
But Tom saved the real "wow" until last. He'd enter the room and ask "How was the sound?"
Of course, it was remarkable. Impressive like nothing I, or anyone else, had ever heard.
A humble, but knowing smile would cross his face and he would proceed to turn around all but two of the speakers in the room to reveal . . .
. . . they weren't speakers at all. They were empty wooden boxes built to look like speakers. The whole, intense sound experience came from just two small speakers in the front of the room. But to have enjoyed the experience first-person you'd have sworn there was NO WAY that those two little speakers could have produced what you heard.
With two small speakers and a sophisticated amplifier, Tomlinson Holman was able to save movie-makers thousands and thousands of dollars because they could the majority of the sound - with the full theater experience - in a room the size of a large bathroom or walk-in closet.
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