Well, first off, when speaking of an electronic tuning device, it's best clear up the difference between precise and accurate. I had a science teacher in high school that had the class work on a lab one day. It involved measuring to the best of our ability with a meter stick and using that measurement to predict the motion, or energy of a little car. We measured down to the millimeter, yet the next day, we were all perplexed that our predictions were wrong! He went on to explain that he had chopped off the ends of all the meter sticks, so by measuring from the end, all of our measurements were innaccurate! Even though we came up with precise measurements. So, back to the Peterson..... It is precise down to the level stated. BUT... since it is not a "sampling" tuner, it just offers a few stretch values that are supposed to be "close enough" to match a lot of pianos. Precise yes, accurate, well, maybe, if you happen to be tuning a piano that matches their presets. Can you make a good tuning without sampling? Yes, though not by following the preset curve. This applies to the Korg tuner as well. The sampling machines (SAT, Tunelab, Cybertuner, Verituner) all take various samples, and then project from those samples, what the other strings inharmonicity will be. All can be manipulated to make fine tunings, though because of the numbers of samples taken, (76 notes while tuning) in my opinion, the Verituner does the best job without constant intervention by the human component of the tuning team. In the end, it comes down to: 1.Unisons- problems here are heard first 2.Octaves- problems here are next to be noticed 3.Temperament- problems here are last to be noticed The older style of machines will do fine with the temperament, yet not do so well in matching the octaves across the break, and from top to bottom. Ron Koval _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
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