hey russ,
I wouldn't go too bonkers about the quiet calibration thing - anywhere reasonably quiet seems to be fine.
Deffo true about the turning it on first - as I found out the first time i used mine where mid game i discovered I had a ball jammed in the anti-jam mechanism...
I had such a bad experience of Syd's Reloader on Speed 3 (I didn't know it was) that i almost ddn't get one, and thought from advice I was given they were incompatible with Ions. That's very much not true (as Pinki pointed out to me) but on anything other than marbles, Speed 3 = paint soup.
I'm always on speed 2 and it's fine...