I've always used 415.3
dt
At 06:17 AM 8/24/2007, you wrote:
>A lovely bit of programming, and a very good fine, David!
>
>One thing I noticed is that there is little or no data on absolute
>pitch accuracy. (He mentions that accuracy is about .3 cents, and
>shows how his A=440 pitch fork when cold gives 440Hz +.2 cents, but
>avoids the actual question of whether this program's A440 actually
>_is_ A 440, and to what accuracy.)
>
>http://www.tunelab-world.com/ has a tuning program which is meant for
>tuning pianos and other keyboard instruments. Tunelab97 has the
>following benefits:
>-freeware
>-can be calibrated (and has descriptions for using NIST tones, either
>by phone or radio, and a file that makes calibration this way easier)
>-can be fed temperament files, many of which are included in the distribution
>-has a phase-zeroing meter display, which shows the exact match of
>note to the target to a very small degree of cents (I believe,
>although I'm not rereading the spec right now, so I could be wrong,
>that a block moving the width of the screen in one second represents
>one cent of deviation)
>-allows measurement and calculation of stretch with adjustment to
>those results (which is very useful for non-harmonic overtones like
>pianos, but might be very useless for lutes)
>-handles any reference pitch (this is there because pianos currently
>in people's homes were built as much as 130 years ago, and might have
>been built to any of three or more pitch standards, but it has a much
>larger range
>-This calculation function also displays the strength of fundamental
>and overtones via bar graphs and shows the cents-deviation from
>harmonic for each overtone, which might be useful to someone studying
>the effects of harmonics on the tone and tuning of lute strings of
>different makes and manufacture
>-allows saving tuning files which include the reference pitch,
>temperament and stretch (if stretch is applied), so once you find out
>the tuning that works best with each instrument, you can save a file
>dedicated to that tuning for future use.
>
>I've used this program mostly for tuning keyboards, guitars and viols.
>I haven't tried it for lute yet, but it should be as serviceable as
>any PC-based program.
>
>There is no mac version, but there is a pocket-PC version (windows
>mobile) and a pro version, both of which have the same features, but
>are more aimed at the professional piano tuner.
>
>If you really want to throw money at a computer-based tuner program,
>the Reyburn Cybertuner may be for you. At about $1000, it has both PC
>and Mac versions, also for Pocket PC. If you don't have a pocket PC
>and want to go that way, they also have packages going for about $1000
>plus the list-price for various models of Pocket PCs. Clearly intended
>for professional piano tuners!
>
>The major shortcoming of these packages for lute or viol tuning is
>that they are intended for chromatic instruments. This means, in
>general, that they will have an automatic next-note-search or
>next-note-sequence which will switch to a note within a chromatic
>semitone of the previous note (sometimes up to as much as a minor
>third away!), and can be set for bi-directional, up-only or down-only
>changes. Since lutes are diatonic in the basses and thirds and fourths
>elsewhere (likewise viols and guitars are a third and fourths) this
>automatic switching is not automatic switching at all. The up side is
>that they tend to correctly recognize the octave of the note they're
>trying to tune, so you can avoid, in the wild, tuning an instrument an
>octave low ( and then wondering why the strings are all flabby!)
>
>Anyway, if you find WinTemper to be what you really wanted, it's a bit
>of labor and no cost to calibrate it against a real pitch standard.
>Most countries have some method, radio or phone-based, of
>disseminating their accepted pitch standard (which should be A=440 to
>some ridiculous number of decimals), so playing this pitch into the
>computer will produce a reading that is the opposite sign of the
>deviation of the program's standard from the "actual" standard. In my
>short look at WinTemper, I didn't see a place to adjust the reference,
>but Tune-lab can be, so you can zero Tune-Lab and forget about
>absolute accuracy, or keep in mind that all the readings from
>WinTemper will need to be adjusted.
>
>The real test of these tuning programs come, however, when you have to
>adjust a large number of instruments to a non-standard pitch, in which
>case just changing the reference pitch (A= ) of WinTemper will
>probably do fine. This works as long as you aren't playing with
>someone who is neurotic about numbers, who will say, for instance,
>"We're tuning to A=415, not A=414.5!", even though their A=415 tuning
>fork is an actual A=414.5Hz. This is the point where acoustics becomes
>psycho-acoustics, though, which is probably beyond the scope of
>electronic/computer-based tuners...
>
>ray
>
>
>
>On 8/24/07, LGS-Europe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If you don't own a multi-temperament or even programmable tuner,
> and want to
> > experiment with the various temperaments, here's a good one for free:
> > http://www.wintemper.com/
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> > ****************************
> > David van Ooijen
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > www.davidvanooijen.nl
> > ****************************
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > To get on or off this list see list information at
> > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
> >
