This maybe helpful, as it is a guide to using a real-time analyser made by Rane to THX specs:
www.rane.com/pdf/old/thxeq.pdf
To me, it sounds very time-consuming to do equalisation by yourself, but it is possible. The Audyssey equalisation has a received good review here and the good thing is it does most of the hard work for you. It's part of the Denon AVR-5805 reviewed on the main site.
Try to follow the speaker manual suggestions for room placement. Keeping your speakers and yourself reasonably far away from the walls is a good idea. Most living rooms are quite reverberant in the mid- and treble ranges, so an extra boost in the bass provided by room standing waves isn't necessarily a bad thing. Try a position the speakers symmetrically in the room, and symmetry in the walls is good, i.e. bare walls on both parallel walls, not bookshelf on one and bare wall on the other. Diffusive surfaces near or behind you (like bookshelves) can spoil the virtual stereo image. If you have flutter echoes, try putting up some pictures with substantial frames to break up hard, flat walls. Experimentation with speaker positioning is always a good idea.
One tip to avoid system brightness is to roll-off the treble when not using full-range speakers. A guidance for a balanced sound speaker is for the low bass response multiplied by the top treble response to equal 50,000, e.g. speaker 50 Hz - 20 kHz +/-3 dB, roll-off treble above 10 kHz.
Here's another link on equalisers:
http://www.homecinemachoice.com/articles/hccarticles/techarticles/2000071stAmongEquals/2000071stAmongEquals.php
