just curious to know is people find the mic auto setup accurate, or do they prefer to do the speaker setup and calibrate manually?

I've had great success with the auto set-up from a practical sense. I suppose if I really cared about a decibel or a fraction of one I might think differently. It's been fine for me and I know the distances that the auto set-up sets are accurate.

I've used it. Outside of it being quite loud (keep the wife and kids out of the room, and get some ear protection ), it seems to do a very good job of level and distance setting. I have no complaints.

I vote for manually setting up the 990. The auto setup with the mic was mostly correct but it missed on the sub and the distances for my surrounds. My surrounds are tri-pole so they may have tricked the mic a bit. Additionally, I use the pink test tones from Digital Video Essentials versus my 990's internal tones. The DVE disc not only does the tones for each speaker but it interpolates between speakers and does a full pan. These latter features have really helped me fine tune the 990's settings for my room. The differences between the 990's tones and the DVE tones resulted in different settings of only a db or two. YMMV.

I found the the auto setup to be pretty accurate however I decided to buy A SPL meter from Radio Shack for $50.00. This model had is digital and received a pretty good review from one of the internet forums that I was on. It simple to use and I was more content to know that my system was a little more accurately calibrated when using the meter.

If you have the funds I think that it is worth the invest.If not the 990 does a very good job.