Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Automatic Receiver Setup

I have a question that may get very technical. That is, what does the automatic receiver setup do and how does it operate?

When I setup my Onkyo last Saturday, it only took a couple of minutes. There was a series of two bursts of either "white" or "pink" noise for each speaker. Started at the front left and then went around a circle, twice.

These bursts were noise not stepped tones or swept tones. So what did the receiver do with this data? Did this $600 receiver do a spectral analysis on each speaker and calculate equalization coefficients? If not, what did it do?

For example, for my M80s, it determined the following:

Left:
60Hz -4 dB
200Hz -6 dB
800Hz +6 dB
1.6KHz +6 dB
3.15KHz +4db

Right:
200Hz -5dB
630Hz +6dB
2KHz +6dB
4KHz +5dB
8KHz +6dB

Obviously the right and left are different, somehow. What is this really telling me? Do I want to use the receiver settings or just set everything flat to 0dB?

My old Kenwood was not anywhere near this sophisticated.

Comments and discussion appreciated.