Amanda: Hi, I'm Amanda.

Shawn: And I'm Shawn.

Amanda: And we're here today to talk about automatic speaker calibration.

Shawn: Good stuff. Well, Amanda, tell everybody about speaker calibration.

Amanda: Well, the deal is when you get your receiver home and get it out of the box, it doesn't have all the information it needs to give you optimum surround sound imaging. It doesn't know exactly where all the speakers are in your room. It doesn't know how far they are away from your seating position or what frequencies they can handle.

Shawn: Exactly right, and normally the way you have to do it is you have to break out a measuring tape. You'd have to measure the distance between where you sit and the speaker. You'd have to figure out the size of the speaker, what frequency it best plays at, so I can see how auto calibration would make things a lot easier.

Amanda: Yes, and it is much easier. Receivers that can do auto calibration come with this small microphone in the box, and all you have to do is plug it in to a small input on the front panel of the receiver and place it in your favorite listening position. Then the receiver sends test tones to each speaker in your system, and it figures out how far they are away from your seating position, which frequencies they can handle, all that good stuff — so you don't have to do any of that entry and work.

Shawn: Exactly right, and one of the cool things is that the receiver itself can calibrate for up to eight different seat positions depending on which system you get. So everybody gets the good sound.

Amanda: That's right, and there you have it: automatic speaker calibration.

Shawn: Good stuff.