[pianotech] What it is not...

Ron Nossaman rnossaman at cox.net
Thu Aug 6 21:11:49 MDT 2009


Ron Koval wrote:
> Hi gang
>  
> I've had some time to experiment with the Tunic OnlyPure software and 
> can offer
> a few more bits of information.  It is NOT a pure 12ths tuning.  That's 
> easy to check -
> just tune a piano and then measure to see if there is a 3:1 or 6:2 
> match.  Nope.

Bernhard has always been very careful and thorough to point 
this out, so it shouldn't come as any great revelation by now.


> It's not just dealing with a single partial - or somehow is responsive 
> (at least in the middle
> and lower end) to the sounding partials of the piano.  Different pianos 
> will end up tuned to different locations, even when measured at a bunch 
> of different partials.

Which is why it's not a pure twelfth tuning. It's not 
comparing just single partials.


> It doesn't seem to learn or change a tuning based on anything heard more 
> than at
> the single note level.  Turn the machine off or on, walk to other very 
> different piano
> and it treats them consistently.

Which means it's comparing whole tones, most likely, and 
indicating minimum garbage in the display. This is how an 
aural tuner listens, rather than singling out specific partial 
matches at the expense of everything else.


> Kent's observation of how well it did tuning mis-matched pianos together 
> prompted me to
> generate the following graph....  Baldwin studio upright and Mason & 
> Hamlin A - measured
> at the single partial level from section to section.   Notice anything 
> peculiar?  Hmmmm...

How about the same two piano comparison chart with your 
Verituner, or any other ETD. In a scaling spreadsheet, the top 
third of the scale is remarkably similar in most pianos.

Most assessments I've read on this system so far approach it 
from the presumption of single partial comparison of the other 
ETDs on the market. I don't think that is the case here.
Ron N


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