I meant to add a bit to that last post, and accidentally did so before pasting this in:
My personal opinion is that the mic and auto setup functions are not a big deal. There are three primary things the auto setup does for you:
Determines which speakers you're using and whether they are large or small:
You can do this quickly manually.
Gives you the speaker distances for delay functions:
Again, easily measured and entered manually.
Offers EQ for your room:
When I had used mine (since sold) I personally didn't like any of the EQ functions that it offered. None of them were preferable to bypassing the EQ, even over multiple attempts, locations, etc. I will admit, though, to having a difficult square room that I still intend to beat into submission.
Finally, there's a huge thing that the autosetup doesn't do that will have you wanting to buy a test disc and meter anyway: It doesn't do subs, probably the most critical speaker to meter, EQ position and balance levels for!
I'm not saying that some people don't have success with the auto-setup functions. I'll also admit that, prior to purchase, I fantasized about the system taking care of every little peak and valley in my room and providing for a perfectly flat response. The reality is, it just doesn't ork as well as one would hope. I'm sure this type of technology will get much, much better in the future, but in my opinion the 3805's auto setup capabilities are far from perfection at this stage.
