VT and SAT III

Ron Koval drwoodwind@hotmail.com
Thu, 24 Jan 2002 18:43:29


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Interesting post, Jim.  Yes, when it is a musical test, over the years the 
tuneoffs have been pretty close.  Unisons, unisons, unisons, may be the best 
advice for what to stress!  But if I read you right about the Wurlitzer 
spinet tuning:

snip
We measured all the significant notes which included the 5 A's, the notes on 
either side of the stringing break on the treble bridge and the highest note 
on the Bass bridge.  This circumvents tuning the entire piano as a first 
pass and then recalculating the tuning to get the best tuning for fine 
tuning.
snip

You guys did a single pass tuning in fine mode after the samples?  If so, I 
think you only got as close as about 3 cents to a fully optimized tuning.  
As an experiment, today I checked with the Wurli spinet here, and sampled, 
and typed (and retyped)the results.  I'm including a *.gif file of the 
resultant graph of 4 steps of sampling.  Series 1 approximates what you did, 
and series 4 is the final result.

Series 1 - 5 A's and break notes
Series 2 - add plain wire notes to just past the treble break (d5)
Series 3 - C3 down to A0
Series 4 - finish samples to C7

I started by sampling just A4, then added the other A's.  These two 
graphlines are not shown.  It's an experiment I've wanted to do for some 
time; I wondered how much the tuning curve shifted with additional samples.  
It's tedious, but if Paul still has the tuning saved, he can type out the 
tuning from 1- 88, then recalculate, and do it again to see how much the 
tuning shifts.

Also when you wrote after retuning with the SAT III:
snip
We then turned on the Verituner and played all the notes of the area from C3 
through A4 and the piano made the VT patterns stand still in every case, and 
better than when I was tuning with the VT.
snip

What did the tuning numbers show?  Did you have trouble with the VT display 
while you were tuning?  This is interesting, how you could stop the display 
using a different machine, and "better"........  But take a look at the 
graph, in that section of the tuning, and up an octave, there is minimal 
difference between the curves.  Lower and higher, however, that's a 
different story.

and then the conclusion of your comparison:

snip
I believe this shows there is not a dime's worth of difference in the tuning 
ability of the tuning programs and in the various temperaments when it comes 
to listening to music being played.
snip

I think we should add....

When the pianos being tuned are matched Steinway L's.

Moral of the story?  I think for the best tunings using the VT, adopt a 
two-pass method of tuning, even if the first pass is a non-tuning pass.  It 
takes me less than 5 minutes.  I believe the results are worth it.

Ron Koval




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