<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4616.200" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Times New Roman" text=#000000 bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV>I don't think yet another tuneoff will settle anything.  The first one didn't, and the second one didn't either.  The "aural only" tuners are convinced they can do MUCH better than a machine, so if the first two tuneoffs were inconclusive, there must have been something wrong with the evaluation process.  I think it would be great to have another tuneoff, just to confirm the previous results.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>One additional method of evaluation might be to confirm what each tuner is attempting to do.  There is a wide range of acceptable and even great tunings.  Octave stretch has a wide latitude depending on a person's subjective preferences. Therefore, in addition to the traditional evaluations used in the past, each tuner should declare what his/her intentions were, and the tuning be measured as to how close they came to what they intended to do.  Lets say one tuner says he/she is going to tune 4:2 octaves from F3 to C8, and 6:3 octaves from E3 to A0.  When the job is done, each note can be measured to see if the intentions were carried out.  That way you'd not have a "it sounds pretty good" but a "the goals were or were not met."  That's a little more objective.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>dave</DIV></BODY></HTML> <PRE> _____________________________ David M. Porritt dporritt@mail.smu.edu Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 _____________________________</PRE>