On Apr 13, 2010, at 3:01 PM, Ron Overs wrote: > The ETD's stretch calculation is based on the inharmonicity > following a geometric curve, Actually, this is a misconception, which may be somewhat more true of some ETDs than others, but fails to understand the "magic" of a smooth geometric curve _at a particular partial level_. It is the fact that the 6th partial is being tuned (as one of the options) that smoothes out the break as a starting point. The fundamentals jump around a bit across the break, while the partials in their smooth progress make the intervals "work out" pretty darned well. This is what the SAT does on its own without any fudging (and there are methods to fudge to make the thirds progress better if that is desired). Other ETDs have various other methods of dealing with breaks, some of which are pretty sophisticated and emulate what an aural tuner would be trying to do. I'll quote here from Ron Koval's recent post on the Verituner and the "Schubert tuning": A0 12:6 75% / 6:3 25% G#1 8:1 100% A1 4:1 80% / 6:3 20% These are user presets that ask the machine to compromise between a couple possible ways of tuning an individual note, giving precedence at some ratio, much like we might favor a 12th over a double octave, but not want to go so far as to make the 2:1 octave too wide (or something along those lines, the point not being the intervals I chose as examples, but the process of compromise). In any case, at this point one simply can't make broad generalizations about "ETD tunings" any more than about "Aural tunings." ETDs can be used in so many ways, and they have so many sophisticated options built in, that someone who understands them can do anything using the ETD that an aural tuner can do. In fact, that was true to a lesser extent going way back to the Sight-O-Tuner, except that there wasn't the calculating ability built in that makes it all so much faster today. Bottom line, it depends on the operator, whether using ears or using ETDs. Anyone claiming that either "method," in and of itself, is superior, or is bound to lead to superior results, is mistaken, IMO. OTOH, I have been using ETDs for 15 years now, and personally I can claim with utter assurance that I produce much better and more consistent tunings using an ETD, which is not to say I wasn't pretty proud of my aural skills. But that is just because I find that using a tool makes life easier and more precise, like maybe I might find using a ruler better for creating a straight line than eyeballing it. When it comes to tuning, the ruler analogy has to be modified to note that we aren't dealing with a plane surface, and some calculation is in needed in order to make the line "look straight." So it has to be a "smart ruler," which is what modern ETDs are. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100416/4c7b016f/attachment-0001.htm>
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