Which ETD?

[Ron Koval]

Yes, size matters..... (couldn't resist!)

Some only carry a fork, others carry a laptop, printer, wires, etc.  And 
yes, RCT with the equalizer function can somewhat customize a tuning.  I say 
somewhat, because what the user has control over is the placement of the 
A's.  So on nicely scaled pianos, you can get a good match with the machine. 
There really isn't a way to handle the break, other than to treat the piano 
like two instruments, and create multiple tunings.

Don said that he wouldn't judge anyone's tuning on a spinet, but I think 
we've been discounting these "challenging" pianos too long.  What single 
partial tuning does, is create a smooth curve tuning of that one partial.  
If the other partials relate to that one in a linear fashon, fine.  Many 
pianos' partials don't 'behave' like that though.  Then choosing which 
partial to tune for different parts of the scale needs to be addressed.

What I don't hear people talking about, is how far back in your tuning do 
you make corrections?  If, for example, you need to tweak a note by a couple 
of cents at the break to make the octave work, do you go back and reset the 
3rds, 4ths, and all the other intervals?  As you go down into the bass, 
where the inharmonicity gets a little random, how do you get your machine to 
adjust all the previously tuned notes to relate to that changed note?

What the Verituner (VT) can do is listen to which partial is strongest, and 
give more weight to that partial.  Terry wrote about my approach to tuning 
using 'balancing' two or more intervals to determine stretch.  Instead of 
any of the other tuners, (or VT in default mode) which listen to for 
example, the 4:2 octave and tune it sharp by a user definable amount that 
needs to be customized for each piano, the custom mode is set up to 
automatically listen to both the 4:2 and the 6:3 octave (or other intervals) 
and set the note between them.  Voila!Octave stretch based on what the VT 
hears from the piano.

What determines if a piano is in tune?  Unisons, octaves and then the rest, 
is the order I use...  Yet all the single partial machines only match the 
octaves of one note, and then extrapolate from there.  The VT sets the 
temperament octave and then matches each note back to the same-name note in 
that octave.(or however far back you set the custom stretch)  Want to set 
the octave-5th as a parameter?  It's an option now.

I'm doing a chapter presentation on this topic next week, let me say again, 
that the machines calculate different tunings from each other.  Of course, 
you can tweak as much as you want, using split records, and all the other 
tricks that have been written about. But if you are looking for a machine 
that can do a good job without all the user input, check out the VT.

So yes, size matters, and so does the display, as well as cost, and "cool" 
factor, and record keeping.......  but if you just consider the quality of 
the tunings produced,  well, you already know what I recommend :)


Ron Koval
Chicagoland

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