Thinkly,

You are correct. I'm pasting this from the AVIA FAQ.

Q: "Calibrating my audio system using built-in test signals gives different results from using AVIA's test signals. Why?

A: The acoustic characteristics of rooms and frequency responses of speakers vary. For this reason, AVIA DVD uses an audio test signal with the recommended shape spectral distribution for setting speaker levels. This shaped noise is designed to be minimally affected by the differences between main, center, and surround speakers. Other audio test signals, such as pink noise, don't have the same spectral distribution and consequently result in different speaker level settings."

"Another reason to use AVIA DVD's test signals rather than built-in tones is that doing so checks your entire playback chain from source to speakers. Setting your system to play back AVIA's test signals correctly compensates for variances caused by your playback equipment."

That second paragraph is naturally from a biased source since they want you to buy their DVD, but the logic makes sense to me so I'll go along with it. :)

jocke: The Avia disc is designed to assist the HT owner with optimizing system setup, including calibrating tones for audio and patterns for video. It's actually a DVD rather than a CD. For more details, see http://www.ovationsw.com

This message was edited by Bruce Burson on 12/28/01 05:02.29.