since the mid 80's up to about a month ago, i used to calibrate manually, which was very time consuming and demanded lots of care and precision, and the results were far from being as good as using Audyssey, because Audyssey does much more than adjusting F.R.
if you know how a Technics SH8000 works, that's the equipment i was using as signal generator/spl meter (the generator would send warble tones every 1/3 octave, and the microphone was factory calibrated independently for every SH8000.)
you can have a look here:
http://audio-heritage.jp/TECHNICS/etc/sh-8000.htmlwhat had to be done, to find the best freq. resp. was by moving the speaker under test a few inches at a time and make a F.R. graph. then move a few inches again and make a new F.R. graph, and so on, until you were satisfied you had the best possible response (speaker location/room response).
then you had to do the same thing to the other speaker, in a stereo system.
you could only adjust F.R. with this instrument, and no equalizer/tone controls were to be used, specially not the "loudness" button.
the whole thing could take one or two days to complete, and it was far from being as good as Audyssey, because Audyssey does more than adjust F.R.
if i had to move the speaker for whatever reason, i would then note on paper the exact place where my speakers were sitting in relation to walls, to be sure i would put them back exactly where they belonged, thus saving myself hours of calibrating.
at the time, it was one of the best ways to do it, and the results were quite good; i had a wide and deep stage, with very good instrument localization (on jazz or classical music).
