Hello all,

Out of curiosity, has anyone encountered a problem in which after you run through the auto cal process an error message stating my surround speakers are set to large and my mains are set to small? It tells me to go back and reconfigure my speakers.

Just to review the obvious, all my speakers are set to "small" and "yes" to the subwoofer. Everything is wired correctly and in even in phase. I ran through it twice just to make sure but the results were the same.

I won't ever rely on the auto cal feature as I use an IVIE sound meter but I like getting to the bottom of weird problems.

Thanks for your input.

I don't recall reading about your error here in the Saloon, but the 990's autocalibration is effective for some and not for others. It didn't work for me either, but like you I was going to use my SPL meter anyway to set the speaker calibration. For me its a feature that could be left off the next pre/pro. It might be less expensive for Outlaw to provide a SPL meter instead of autocalibration.

Auto calibration didn’t work for me either. I had the same problem. The auto calibration feature on the 990 is one of a few features that don’t work as advertised. Very disappointing.

I had the same issue. For some reason for me, the 990 needed to start the auto-calibration with the speaker sizes set to large, and/or the crossovers set as low as they can go (40Hz). After doing this for all speakers and re-running the setup, it was much more accurate.
Give it a shot.

I'm not sure why it doesn't do this itself when starting the calibration.

The recommendation from Scott some time back was to adjust your bass management prior to running the auto-setup: pull your crossovers down from the default of 100Hz unless that crossover is actually appropriate for them, and even in that case you can pull the crossovers down temporarily if you get the "large surrounds" error.

Auto calibration worked pretty well for me...within 1db of using the SPL meter...on the second attempt. I'm not using a subwoofer so perhaps that was an influencing factor. I can't complain about the feature. I thought it worked pretty well for someone who didn't want to get overly technical with setup.

It worked well for me also, within 1dB on all channels as compared to the SPL meter (easily within my margin of error)...

It got the delay settings almost dead on as well. It was off by about 4 feet with the Sub, but bass is supposed to be difficult to localize, right?

While I hadn't heard Scott's recommendation before, I did adjust my crossovers before running it.

I hadn't seen Scott's suggestion either and continually got the message to switch my speakers.
I tried running it with the Subs turned off and that worked but, of course, I had to set the sub levels manually.
I'll give it another shot tonight with the other crossovers pulled down to 40hz to match my mains.

My experience with the 990 auto calibration has been very disappointing. The delay calibration seems to be ok but the surround levels and sub level have never been right. It's important to set your speaker size and crossover BEFORE running the test and to make sure the tone defeat is ON.
You're better off using an RS meter and the 990 generator or the AVIA test disc.
Also, see my post about 990 bass level problems.

Auto calibration worked very well for me. It only makes sense to complete the set-up configurations first then as a last and final step, run the auto calibration. Distances were spot on and levels on the money too. My sub has built-in 6 band eq and I ran THAT set-up first then the 990 to adjust overall levels

I ended up running the auto calibration twice on my 990 and got the large surround error...so I calibrated it with my spl meter. I reread this post again, and changed all my speaker crossovers to 80...I had set the mains and center at 80 and the surround crossover to 120 on the first 2 go rounds...and rerunning it at 80 it worked! I went back in and changed the crossovers on the surrounds back to 120. I have yet to compare to manual readings but just listening it seems pretty good.

whenever i encounter the auto calibration error this is what I do to have it complete it's calibration.

1. turn tone defeat ON
2. set all speakers to small, even though I have large mains
3. set crossover to 180 or 200 for fronts and rears

that's it.. it works 99% of the time for auto calibration now. otherwise if I don't do these three steps.. i get the error message every time.

good luck

Is this advice from 2007 still the current advice?

My speakers are all set to small and the crossovers are as follows and I'm still seeing the same error as in the first post:
Also, the 990 doesn't support a single rear surround like the 950 did, correct?

Thanks!

-Joe

I contacted the Outlaws and got a quick response from Scott.

The calibration issue is because the 990 apparently felt the crossover on my surrounds was set too high. Scott tells me: "Unfortunately, the Model 990's auto setup has a strange way of advising you that the x-over setting you have selected for the surround channels was less than optimal given the speaker's actual, measured frequency response and additional options for that channel built into the Model 990's bass management system. "

This would be fine if it were just some kind of warning, but it comes in as a hard error that doesn't let me save calibration settings. So I have to adjust the xovers to 80hz, auto-calibrate, then set the xovers back. Not a big deal, but it would be good for new owners to know up front.

As for my other question, no the 990 does not support a single rear surround for 6.1 like the 950 used to. Again, from Scott: "...the Model 990 can not specifically be configured for 6.1, though you can certainly connect the speaker directly to a single surround back channel (though you'll need to manually configure all of your channel levels and not use the auto setup function)."

-Joe

I must admit I don't use the auto calibration in the 990. I did not run into the crossover issue you've noted but auto calibration could not get the speaker distances right and it was way off when setting the subwoofer. I use the digital video essentials disc to generate the tones and a radio shack meter to measure them. I've found this more accurate and I don't mind the manual process.