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.