Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Should I have a professional calibrate my system?

I don't know if I should laugh or cry..... I'm always getting picked on.. It's just not fare!!!

It's not fair either.

Bayne, you made a good decision.

The 3808CI does a great job calibrating the speakers - I found no need for my meter. The included mic and audyssey (sp?) works fine (you don't need to use the audyssey eq settings which I didn't like, just the speaker distance and level settings). There is a bug with the sub calibration - it set mine to -12db which was way too quiet.

>>By calibrating your home theatre system to produce the proper sound for the placement of your speakers, whether they are in cabinets, in walls or on stands, properly adjusting the levels of these speakers can produce a much more enjoyable experience. Without calibrating your system there can be peaks and valleys in your sound waves producing dead and live areas in the room. The dead areas will cause the person in that area to be removed from the movie and the person in the peak areas to develop listening fatigue.

I call BS on whoever wrote the ad. The guy doing the calibrating may be competent, but the ad copy is bogus.

Calibrating the system is not going to do much for "live and dead areas" -- only speaker placement and room treatments can do that -- but it will make sure the sound from each speaker is "balanced" so you get as close to the effect that the audio engineers intended.

If you didn't have good internet resources (like us, he says with a big smile) then it would probably be worth bringing someone competent in to help you calibrate the first time. If you're not interested in learning about calibration then by all means bring in someone, but if you are at all interested then here's another vote for doing it yourself.

IMO the big benefit is not "doing it better", but (a) being able to experiment to make the sound "perfect for you" rather than "reference perfect", and (b) being able to calibrate the system *again* after you screw up the settings

Way ahead of you. I've printed of several articles with step-bystep guides to using the Avia disk and Radio Shack SPL meter. I'll let the Audyssey do it's thing, tweak it, and then go to town with the SPL meter. Then, in a few weeks when the new HT seating arrives, do it all over again. I imagine I'll be seeking more advice when everything arrives from you friendly know-it-alls.

Following the Avia or Sound and Vision type setup discs are great, very easy.
Stick to that and most of your home calibration for audio and video should be taken care of, short of having a pro do your projection unit as mdrew mentioned.
THAT may be worth having a pro do the work.
I've delved into the service menu with our now 5 year old Toshiba CRTV and it is not that touchy, but finding the proper info is tough.