From which ear? (just curious)

Sanjay,

Neither, an SPL meter.

Greg,

"Yes/No": Can't be both, has to be one or the other.

"don't know what it means": Easy: you are talking about "0.5 foot". It may be me, but half a foot is six inches. Who knows, YMMV.

"tenth inches": You're kidding, right? I agree with Sanjay. Which ear are you setting the distance to, as that has a resolution of almost six inches. (I'm a fat head!)

"Don't know what that means". Easy, again. If the 990 (and most every other processor or receiver) doesn't give you resolution below a foot using electronic correction, so stay with me on this, MOVE THE SPEAKER OR THE CHAIR to compensate for the differental.

Greg, Fair enough. When measuring, it's not impossible to get to within a tenth of an inch from the centre of SPL meter's microphone to the centre of a speaker's tweeter. However, when listening to your system (all 8 speakers), which ear do you place where the SPL meter was? And is it the outside of your ear or your ear drum (valid question, since they are separated by more than a tenth of an inch).

All right guys, ease up a bit now. I think it's been made pretty clear around here lately that different things are important to different people.

Owl's_Warden,

Precisely, there is no point to this counterproductive banter. In the future I'll only review this thread for something substantive.

The question still remains unanswered. Anybody?

Greg,

Yes, back to the question... I assume that's the question of whether the auto setup offers finer control than manual setup, right?

I obviously haven't been able to try it, but from what I can tell in the manual (page 28 in particular), it would appear that the auto setup will "fill in the blanks" on the setup screens that would be used for a manual configuration - which makes me assume that there is no finer control afforded by using auto setup. That makes sense from another standpoint - if the auto setup were able to use smaller increments, it would make sense to offer those same adjustment increments for manual control. Until we start getting units in our hands to test (or Shawn has a chance to try auto setup and report his findings), that's the best answer I can come up with.

LOL

Very funny, Twisted.

Seriously, I agree that you can absolutely hear small differences as you move your head from side to side, but in real world conditions, one-foot increments are just fine (probably even too small to be realistic, actually.)

Understand that films are often mixed in large soundstages/theaters where the engineers aren't sitting at one-foot tolerances. In fact, they ordinarily aren't using delays at all. The delay is a home theater device designed to help recreate the large theater experience and the speaker distances involved in those settings.

In short, since I think our ultimate goal is to reproduce film sound as accurately as possible (or multichannel audio) I think there is a lot more "slop" in the process than delay distances of less than one foot. MUCH more slop.

In general, I think home theater listeners using the foot settings in their pre/pros tend to OVERuse the delay. I've always found that reducing the amount of delay a bit from the pre/pro "sanctioned" settings tends to lock in a more solid surround image and give the sound more punch and intensity. So I usually start with the pre/pro footage settings and then reduce the amount of rear delay until I get the sound I like from my listening position. (Other people in the room are on their own. )

That's what I have been hearing in my current system! SLOP!

Maybe it needs new ball joints..