Tuning Chart

[Horace Greeley]

List,

A couple of thoughts on this thread; messages included for clarity (sorry
for the resulting length):

At 12:57 AM 5/16/96 -0600, you wrote:
>>    On behalf of someone offline, I'm looking for the chart that comes with
>> most electronic tuning machines that converts hz frequency to cents.
>>Essentially this person needs the chart to check the aural
>>tempramants of his students (incuding me) with a vintage Conn strobotuner.
>>If anyone has the data stashed somewhere electronically, a copy would help
>>
>>Thanks, 8-) Rob Kiddell
>--------------------
>Hi, Rob,
>
>It's been a while since I've seen a Strobotuner, but if memory serves me, it
>has a cents knob. Why do you need to convert Hz into cents? Apart from the
>rough rule of thumb that 1 Hz=4 cents @A440, 2 cents @880, etc., no table can
>tell you what you're asking to the degree of accuracy you require, for two
>reasons: 1) each piano has a different scale and 2) two good tuners might
>choose slightly different widths of temperament octave.  If you are using it
>to check temperaments, for each piano you will need to calculate an
>individual amount of cents offset for each note (except A440), based upon the
>width chosen for the temperament octave. I can help with that if you need;
>it's not difficult.
>

The cents knob on the old Stobotuner served several functions, the primary
one of which was to calibrate the machine itself to an exterior standard.
The power supply was inadequate in design, and fluctuated with line voltage
changes, temperature, and yes, humidity.  The recommended (by Conn)
reference was, a tuning fork if no reliable electronic reference was available.

>Second question: does the little window display all the harmonics, or just
>octaves?
>
Actually, the windows displayed all the partials the machine (as a unified
whole; i.e., microphone, circuitry, as well as display) was capable of
sensing.  As a result, the variations visible in the window, represented the
changes in the balance of the partials making up the perceived tone as a
function of time.

>Finally, I don't think you can get an accurate enough reading with a
>StroboTuner, although you can certainly get a pretty good idea of how smooth
>your temperament is. Is there someone around with an AccuTuner? If not, good
>results can be obtained with a little more effort with an old Sight-O-Tuner,
>and it's not terribly expensive used.
>
>Let me know if I can help further.
>Bob Davis
>

I am not sure if I totally agree with Bob about accuracy here.  There seems
to me to be room for interpolation resulting in an accurate relative
reading.  The difficulty, for me, was to have sufficient access to a
properly working Sight-O-Tuner to really become acquainted with how it works
and what it can and canot do.  The tremendous advantage of the Sight-O-Tuner
remains that it presents real-time analog visual display of the tone
production process (attack, decay, release, whatever your preferred
terminology).  With all respect to those who use other electronic tuning
aids, the Sight-O-Tuner is still the only reasonably available reductive
tool which allows this kind of analysis.

More later, if there is any interest.

Best to all.

Horace