<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Feb 4, 2007, at 8:54 PM, <A href="mailto:rwest1@unl.edu">rwest1@unl.edu</A> wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>Conclusion:</DIV><DIV>All of these aural tests would be possible to calculate, but difficult and time consuming to do, especially for every note of the piano. Numbers and measuring don't, IMHO, capture the essence of tuning. ETD's can crunch some numbers, average them out, and give an excellent calculated result, but whether or not those calculations actually fit the piano depends on what you hear.</DIV></SPAN></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>Hi Richard,<BR><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>Listening to all kinds of aural tests gives the illusion (IMO) of fitting a tuning to the piano, note by note, every single one. But, of course, there really isn't enough time to do all the tests, and the results are often contradictory and can lead to more confusion than clarity. In the practical world, all that fussing with getting each beat rate precisely correct tends to lead to spending far too much time and effort on deciding, at the expense of achieving solid and clear unisons throughout. None of that fussiness matters if the unisons aren't utterly clear and solid. To my way of thinking, the major benefit of the ETD is that the average tuner using it spends most of the effort on "accomplishing" the tuning rather than on making countless decisions, resulting in better unisons and stability. </DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>Numbers are merely a model of the physical world, the kind of model that is successful in sending rockets to other planets among other feats. Yes, there does need to be a ground control to watch over things, but they would be helpless without those numerical calculations. Granted, with the piano there is a level of complexity with scale breaks and whatnot, but it is not all that complex. Even a reading of pairs of partials of three strings (FAC for SAT) produces a tuning curve that is quite acceptable to most people, and which tends to ace the PTG tuning test (high 90's for most careful tuners). The more sophisticated machines take more into consideration, and give opportunity to customize to the piano or the tuner's style. </DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>Can an aural tuner find fault with a tuning produced via calculations of an ETD? Certainly. And it is also true that an aural tuner can find fault with any tuning produced via purely aural means. I, for one, don't find the differences significant. Tunings are fleeting things at the best of times.<BR><DIV><DIV>Regards,</DIV><DIV>Fred Sturm</DIV><DIV>University of New Mexico</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:fssturm@unm.edu">fssturm@unm.edu</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></DIV><BR></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BODY></HTML>