Onkyo TX-SR805 kinda rocks!

I got the Onkyo TX-SR805 hooked up two days ago, but no real "configuration" done.  I decided to rearrange the entire "theatre room" in the process, so it took a bit longer than expected.  Our room is a bit goofy and it's in a state of flux right now, so I didn't expect much from the Onk right off the bat.  There's no way I can describe the room, so here's the current config... kinda. 

The dead couch is one I'm tossing out, but I have to scavenge some bits from it first, so it's going to be hanging around messing up my acoustics for a while.  But here's the cool bit...

The Onkyo comes with a little tuning microphone.  You plugs it in, it tells you where to puts it and it starts sending sound pulses out the speakers (one at a time).  It listens to the results, figures out what your configuration is, how each speaker performs, what the acoustics are like and then it programs itself to compensate for everything.  It takes about 15-20 minutes to do the minimum of three readings (it can manage up to eight) and then about 5 minutes for it to calculate everything.  Voila!  As good of a sound as possible considering the environment.

I actually had the power go out in the middle of the first session, which sukt mightily.  But, I did it again when the power came back and it did a pretty decent job of managing two issues that I knew I had...  My mismatched center channel (it's an Infinity, all others are KLH) and the dead couch absorbing everything from the rear left speaker.  We slapped in our most recent NetFlix...  PathFinder (horrible movie with mediocre sound, but excellent visuals).  I was quite surprised that the Onk did a phenomenal job of setting itself up and I didn't even notice the dead couch "sound suck".  Job well done!

I've got some more thoughts on the Onk, but I'll tackle them in another post or three.