Hello folks,
After using Tunelab on a PPC for a few years, I decided to finally purchase the iPhone app for my 3GS. I have been VERY pleased!! My iPhone 3GS is about 3 years old. On a full battery charge I can get about 4 tunings. I would like to upgrade to the 4S, mostly for the 8 megapixel camera and maybe a little more speed, but had heard that early on, there were some problems with the battery life of the 4S. Do any of you have a iPhone 4S and run Tunelab with it? If so how many tunings do you get off of one charge?

I use an iPod Touch and TuneLab, but I also have an iPhone 4S. There was a memory leak issue early on, but it was corrected with a software upgrade. On the iPod Touch, I can tune about five to six pianos without recharging.

The iPhone 4s is very hungry regarding battery life with all the extra goodies that you will love to play with. These extras require more power to fuel its faster duel processor, making me wonder if the iPhone 5 might have a better battery life and worth waiting for. For my day to day tunings I use a iPod, even with that I have to watch the power factor and plug it into the car charger between jobs.
Robin Stevens ARPT
South Australia

I would recommend a car charger. It is certainly a lot cheaper than a new phone, and may prove very useful in general.
Also, if you set the phone to airplane mode, it will conserve a great amount of the battery. This will effectively turn it into an ipod touch instead of an iphone, so you cant get any calls. If you work in a more rural area with a weak signal, then this will have an even greater effect because the phone uses more energy to constantly search for the signal.

I still use a windows mobile phone with tunelab. Dedicated. Samsung Omnia. Not activated and all wireless functions turned off. It's battery life is awesome. It is not looking for signals.

My cell phone is a 3GS. It is my phone and personal organizer. Etc..

To buy tunelab for iOS I would have to spend again.

I understand people that have bought it for iOS since day one. Looking for solutions.

I will probably end up buying tunelab again eventually. It is great software.

But for now, I have an old HP pda as backup, and my Samsung does not seem like it is about to die on me.

An iPod in airplane mode seems to be the best bet for new users.

I can get up to about 20 tunings on one charge of my phone -

but I am a professional, and tune by ear,

(& tuning fork to set pitch) only !


ALSO - I'd recommend spending less time on you fancy phone 'apps',

& spending more time on learning proper tuning skills.

John,
I don't want this thread to turn into a Aural Vs. ETD debate, but I must say that 100% of my customers have been VERY pleased with the way I tune using Tunelab with the EVBT 3 temperament layered on top of the calculated tuning curve. Even a well-renowned pianist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra who has her doctorate in piano performance, loved the way the piano sounded and was fascinated with EVBT 3 and how it made the music sound. I only tune part-time, I am a choir teacher in a public school full-time, but am now in such high demand here in my area that I can barely keep up. Spent my entire Christmas break from school just trying to get caught up. So I must be doing something right.

The battery issue is one of the many reasons why I went with Android.
With the iPhone you are stuck with the battery that Apple gave you but with my HTC Desire I was able to buy a double capacity battery on eBay (3000mAh vs 1400mAh) for less than $15, thus more than doubling my battery life.
These things are little computers and they can really suck up a lot of juice.
What good is a smartphone if many of the more impressive Apps can only be used for a short time.
Also I appreciate Android for the fact that I can put any damn App I want in there and not be dictate to what I am allowed to do by a corporation.

In my opinion Ryan, there is no 'debate' about it...

if you have to rely on an ETD to confirm that you have done it right,

then it displays either a lack of skill,

or lack of confidence in your own ability.

My iPhone 4s has better battery economy than my 3gs did, but I don't use it to tune with.

Why don't you learn to write a decent English sentence before patronizing others in a condescending tone.

Kees

It is an assumption that anyone "relies" on an ETD to confirm their tuning. Most techs I know simply use it as an additional tool that will reveal things in certain ways that your ear never will. It does this with no human error associated with fatigue, extraneous noise interferance or good days/bad days.

It allows a remarkably quick general assesment as to where the piano sits in pitch over all when you show up...and it does so without the use of fickle reference tones like tuning forks, guess work, or additional intervals being played.

It allows an entirely free approach to what notes get tuned first and does not handcuff one to a particular temperament octave or order of notes to expand upon. Very useful if there is an unstable part of the soundboard or issues with loading it in a certain way.

I have tuned by ear over 25 years now and still do not come nearly as close on a large 1 pass pitch raise as the software calculates. Sometimes its nearly right on when I'm done.

If an aural tuner plays two notes of a unison for example and hears a slight beat, they must swing through with the hammer to decide if the note they are tuning is sharp or flat. An ETD user will know it before hand and can fine tune by ear directly to the target pich without wasted hammer movement or wear on the tuning pin. Same goes for any other interval if you are aware of which side of sharp and flat it sits on.

I can name about a dozen other reasons why I welcome an ETD to my box of tools at my disposal but to bring this back to you JP...

If you tune a piano in an outside stadium where the temperature is 50 deg F or inside a 95 deg church in the summer... what do you do with your tuning fork? My ETD will put the referance A440 right on the button while you are trying to warm up your tuning fork to an unknown temperature or calculating the cents adjustment to compensate.

I'm not knocking aural only tuners, as i was one of them for the longest time...I just think some of them assume too much about hybrid tuners in a negative light...and its mostly fiction.

Very well said Emmery!!

Well that goes a certain way to proving my point -

I know others here will disagree,

but I stand by my opinion that if you are incapable of tuning by ear,

you have no right to call yourself a piano tuner.


Once again - if you can't hear if a note is flat or sharp,

why is someone masquerading as a piano tuner?



So no amount of training/skill required there then?

I'm interested to know where, exactly, my "sentence"

(it is actually a paragraph) was incorrect?

I would like to think that the many people that use of ETDs, do in fact tune by ear as well....using the ETD as a point of reference so's to speak. Perhaps it's a little like we aural tuners being constantly guided by our mentors when undergoing training.

The main point that keeps cropping up time and time again, is what appears to be it's lacking in identifying precise unisons. Another issue I have often wondered about is the ETD's apparent inablity of being "thrown off" by outside interference, such as movement causing disturbance of air.... which certainly affects aural tuners!

Anyway, I realise that this is going off topic, and I only really wanted to ask why is it that some simply have to be so rude to others ? It's not at all called for, and rather childish. Yes, by all means disagree, but there's absolutely no need to get personal or act like language professors.

If you have an irresistible urge to insult ETD users, can you do it in a dedicated thread please? It is off-topic.

Kees

Why is there always someone who has to turn a simple discussion into a debate? I think it is pointless. At the end of the day is the piano tuned? that is ALL that matters. I use my ears and cybertuner and in a noisy area I am happy to use it. If you have a problem with your heart do you want it checked by a doctor using just a Stethoscope and his ears, or an MRI machine? Its called progress. It's called using all the tools at your disposal for doing the best job you can.
ANYWAY...back to the original topic. Im not sure if you are aware or not, but unless you close programs you have opened on the iphone they are always running in the background. to close them hit the bottom square button twice. this will open a banner on the bottom showing all open programs. Hold your finger on any program and when they start shaking you can now close them. I should also add this is how it works on the 4s. I do not know if 3gs works the same way.

I have a MiLi brand battery extender for my ipod touch that also works for an iphone. The unit makes the ipod a little bulkier, but adds about 10 hours of run time to the battery.
I get about 6 hours out of the ipod, so that's more hours than I care to tune in a day...

A side benefit is that the internal battery on your phone doesn't go through so many cycles because the external battery keeps it charged up. There are many different kinds that plug in via the synch port. It would be easy to store the external battery in your kit and keep the phone in your pocket, only adding the battery when you tune. I think I got mine from Sharper Image on sale for about $25...

Ron Koval

Driving the thread right off the tracks, I'd say this opinion displays a clear lack of experience and skill with manipulating the modern tools of the trade.

It's pretty easy to get superior results with the latest ETD's that surpass most aural tuners on their best days... possibly even better than the best aural tuners in the day to day grind.

I'll call it a wash with comparing the top in the field and their very best tunings...

Ron Koval

JP, your first point above is no point at all. It is the end product of the tuning and a satisfied paying customer that determines if your a tuner..not the method in how a tuner achieves this. They can be a tuner if they achieve this with no vision, one ear deaf, standing on their head using a $19 tuning hammer. I know several ETD only tuners that do a more consistant quality tuning than some aural tuners that have been at it decades FWIW. Put stability into the equation and ETD or no ETD becomes a moot point.

For your second point about knowing if a specific unison is sharp or flat by ear...I will totally call BS on that. A well trained human ear can discern down to about 1/2 -1/3 cent consistant accuracy on beating intervals to begin with. Test parameters from various schools and organizations actually allow errors more than twice this.

As for telling me which of two independantly played notes is the sharp one from two strings 1 cent apart...good luck with that, total nonsense. I would wager a pretty sum that if you tried to tune A440 to your fork listening to the tones independantly, you wouldn't get better than +/- 5-10 cents on a good day. The ETD will show which ones which down to a tenth of a cent and you need not manipulate one string or the other with the hammer to determine if the beats speed up or slow down.

Your last point about "no amount of training is needed then?" is polarizing the question to extremes. There is certainly more to a tuning than understanding an ETD spinner's direction, even if one is not up to par on their aural skills.

That is a genuine possibility -- but only one and I doubt the most common.

I do not use ETDs, have tried them and don't really see the value for the dollar, plus they slow me down for pitch raises. I have also written in this forum about ETD issues and take strong exception when they are pitched (so to speak ) as providing a result superior to good aural tuning. I have also written about their weaknesses and shortcomings.
HOWEVER . . .

I have many colleagues who happen to use these tools and do superb work. Just because they don't follow my particular path to a good tuning doesn't mean that they don't get there -- and to their own satisfaction with method and their customers (high profile individuals/venues) satisfaction with the result.

I have tried the devices and am generally familiar with what they do. I would invite you to do the same. Perhaps after actual investigation into the topic, you might come to a broader perspective about how they fit into the world of piano technology. I think there are valid critiques to be made of the various ETDs out there -- but no intrinsic criticism of their users.

I think the question here is how can you even know if you're doing a good job with your ETD if you are unable to check it with your ears? So while tuning by ear certainly isn't essential, being able to discern what makes one most certainly is...and that requires aural skills.

That moves into another topic... Just what makes a beautiful tuning and what are the musical listening skills needed to hear one? Techs may be shocked/hurt to hear that the hard-earned aural tuning skills have more to do with matching the smoothness of temperament of the early ETDs than making a beautiful tuning...


And no, I'm not suggesting that all one needs to do is blindly follow the blinking lights...

Ron Koval