[pianotech] The Tunic OnlyPure Tuner

Andrew & Rebeca Anderson anrebe at sbcglobal.net
Wed Mar 4 17:56:49 PST 2009


Not really complicated actually.  Verituner does the same thing (not  
his tuning) reading IH on the go.  Tunings are closer to dead-on if  
you do A4 and then A3 first but not bad if you just start at the  
bottom and go up.

Think of it this way,
	The temperament octave is going to be within the neighborhood of the  
theoretical temperament frequencies.  You measure IH at the note you  
are tuning and extrapolate its relation to the temperament octave via  
your chosen stretch intervals (which may involve educated intermediate  
extrapolations) and go from there.  Verituner tunings do improve with  
second and third passes.  I suspect his "temperament" octave is rather  
larger and adjusts itself as needed.  He is looking for a syncronicity  
not addressed by simple, single-partial matching which means, I  
suspect, that the tunings are going to be interesting to us technicals  
and pleasing in perhaps a different way then we are accustomed to.

I've used Verituner to tune a P12 on a S&S D and I didn't like it.   
The stretch was way too narrow in places and grinding wide elsewhere.   
Of-course the VT doesn't lend itself to P12 in the bass.  Reading what  
is said about the tunings suggest that his tunings are not the simple  
P12 variety most of us are talking about.  In this case we may be  
talking about an ideal template across the scale that is deviated from  
by the measured IH at each note.  In my mind this would explain why so  
different scales can come so close together as demonstrated by the  
Bosie and D tuned together.  If this is the stategy, I'm surprised it  
works so well...

Absent specifics we really are speculating.

Andrew Anderson

On Mar 4, 2009, at 5:56 PM, David B. Stang wrote:

>
> I read Kent Swafford's article in the March Journal about the
> "Tunic OnlyPure" ETD with great interest. Kent said inventor "has
> stated his intention to withhold most explanations of how all
> this works", and their web site says very little other than what
> the article said.
> Kent writes that the inventor claims it "deals with inharmonicity
> in a new way that is automatic".
> It seems magical to me that any device could just start tuning
> a note without having previously recorded data about the inharmonicity
> of other notes. How does it "know" where to place a treble pitch,
> without inharmonicity data from lower strings?
> Kent said it did a great job, but it can't really be magic, so, I'm
> just wondering if anyone has any general speculation about
> how it works. (Gosh, I was just beginning to think I had
> some idea of how regular ETD's work, now this comes along!)
> Thanks
>
> David B. Stang
> Columbus Ohio
>
>
>




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