Whereas much recent scholarship on sound cinema focuses on its technologies and socio-cultural effects, here instead the consequences for the architecture of cinema buildings will be considered with a focus upon examples in Scotland. It will be shown that the first new Scottish cinemas completed in the 1929-30 period and promoted as being intended for the ‘talkies’ were actually little different in terms of architectural resolution from other recent examples from the silent era. In London, meanwhile, the involvement of the building acoustics pioneer Hope Bagenal in the design of the New Victoria cinema brought about a fresh approach in Britain in which the auditorium was designed to absorb sound evenly and to give an equal quality of acoustic experience to the entire audience. As the cinema’s interior, which relied to a greater extent upon lighting effects rather than on neo-classical architectural detailing, was considerably cheaper to realise than comparable examples of more traditional and ornate design, the solution also proved economically attractive to cinema operators. Inspired by this precedent, cinema architects in Scotland, such as Alister G. MacDonald, David Stokes and James McKissack, produced their own early examples of ‘moderne’ cinema interiors. This clean-lined and fashionable look was not only was more easily adapted for good sound reproduction but also signified that cinema as a medium was entering a new phase.