Audio THX Certified sound systems - Rate them

THX Certified,Certified for Windows Vista, ISO 9001 certified, ISI ... Quality or base standards?

@desiibond, apart from the rigorous way that you've told us about how THX certifies theaters, how about sharing some technical data on THX home speakers instead of their marketing speak? Drop the certification guarantees (we all know how that works) and get down to the basics.

The wiki on THX is also quite specific on the environment of the setup. Couldn't see anything on how THX applies to speakers only. How do they certify a set of speakers? Shed some light, will you?

The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format: all sound formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby Stereo, Ultra-Stereo), can be "shown in THX." THX is mainly a quality assurance system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer. THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, no parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise.
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Source: THX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm no audiophile myself, but basing quality on a commercial certification sounds lame to me.

On quality certification in general, two lines about one of the most used certifications (ISO 9000 series) which most people believe denotes quality from wikipedia.

ISO 9001 is not in any way an indication that products produced using its certified systems are any good. A company can intend to produce a poor quality product and providing it does so consistently and with the proper documentation can put an ISO 9001 stamp on it
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Source:ISO 9000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IMHO, products that strive to just meet certain standards instead of trying to exceed them or set newer standards are always going to be lame. Always.
 
Sorry to bump this, but after reading this whole thread and then this article on AT... here is something THX-wannabe's should understad.

Article : AnandTech: THX Certified HDTVs - Useful or Just Marketing?

There’s some confusion about what THX standards actually mean. Unlike Dolby or DTS, THX tends to stay out of the business of actually altering the signal, though they have dabbled in psychoacoustic effects, such as THX Loudness Plus, which tweaks frequency response to maintain the perception of listening to the movie soundtrack in the sound booth at reference level.

However, THX doesn’t compete with Dolby or DTS in developing primary encoding standards. The training program for audio, for example, gives home theater installers knowledge and tools to design rooms that maximize the listening experience. You learn about acoustic treatments, speaker placement, audio calibration and room design.

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The core idea, remember, is to attempt to recreate the soundscape as the mixing engineer hears it in the sound stage through reference speakers. However, different sets of hardware may reach this goal in different environments. A set of THX certified PC speakers try to recreate that soundscape in the near field environment of a typical PC user – only a couple of feet from the speakers. If you take those THX certified PC speakers and attach them to even a modest home theater installation in a small room, you won’t get that same audio experience.
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Still think that THX certified audio gear is supposed to be better sounding? Especially if your speakers and listening area is not optimized for proper experience? Which essentially is what Cranky is trying to explain, that, even with non-THX gear, you can get better experience if you've set it up properly?
 
Great. Thank you for all this wonderful information. And now that I'm even more confused, will someone actually tell me which is a good speaker system to buy? Gracias :->
 
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