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How do you read the display efficiently?
It offers four displays at once: the spectrum, the offset number, the strobe lines and the slow filling line above the note number.
My brain can't monitor all four at once, and I can't decide which to ignore, so I am always jumping from one to another, uncertain if I'm making best use of it all.
Thank you for your advice!

I set the spectrum to be +/-100 cents on the far edges, and
+/-10 cents near the target frequency, so there is more detail
as you get closer.

Use the spectrum first, to get within a few cents, and then start
looking at the strobe lines and the filling line. The filling line
lets you know when you are really getting close to the mark.

You'll get used to it....

I tend watch them in the following order..

I start with the spectrum display to see which way I need to start moving, as it gets close to the target pitch my eyes then switch over to the phase display and watch for the boxes to slow down, I then look at the display above the current note display, it will begin to fill in when you are within one cent of the target. Then when tuning unisons, I use the same process but the very last little part is done by ear. Using this method has resulted in very stable tunings. Being able to see more than one string at a time in the spectrum display keeps me from having to jerk the string all over the place. I can ease it right into place. I believe that the less the string is moved around the better. I hear people say that you can't use an ETD to tune unisons, but Tunelab can get you very close.

Ok, after I read Paul's post, he pretty much said the same thing. LOL

Interesting. I've never given any thought to tuning the unisons with TuneLab. I always used TuneLab to establish the pitch of the first string of the unison and then tune in the other strings by ear completely ignoring the display. I'll have to pay attention again next time I tune just to see what the display is doing while I'm tuning in the unisons.

Tuning unisons aurally is generally faster and cleaner.

But there are situations where, perhaps due to one string
having a false beat, where it can be easier to tune all
three strings with Tunelab.

I much prefer Tunelab's horizontal display versus the spinning dials on other apps and tuners. The graph is a "coarse" indication of pitch - the large horizontal bar gets you closer, and the small bar just above the note indicator is your fine indicator. That is the order to follow. It's important to get that fine indicator as far to the right as you can, whether you catch it on the strike of the note, or on the decay. The strike will measure sharper than the decay - however, I find Tunelab a bit slow to catch the strike, so I usually measure the decay.

I preferred the "barn door" type of fine indicator over the current "one bar" type. I simply closed the "barn doors" .

I prefer unison tuning by ear.

Does anyone use the numerical readout on the upper right of the spectrum display?

Do you mean the indicator that shows how many "cents off" the note is from the target frequency?

It's useful at the beginning, to assess if the job will be a pitch raise or not. Load the "average" tuning file first, and check various notes to see how many cents off they are. If they are mostly over 10 cents off, they you'll have to do a pitch-raise, in Tunelab's "over-pull" mode. Do not measure iH until after the first pass in over-pull mode.

Then you can measure iH (remember to turn off "over-pull"!), and tune normally.

During this second pass, you should be roughly within 10 cents, except the higher octaves, due to the higher stretch. But the cents indicator is less important to look at during the second pass.

I have not seen the display. But from the description you may be able to use the digital cents readout to temper an interval at the coincident partial. Or to "temper" the octaves. You would be comparing two, (or more notes in the case of octaves), with one machine setting. But only if the note selection stays put. If the machine auto selects to the note you play this wouldn't work. This also would let you leave behind the chromatic order of tuning most tuning programs impose. If you follow an aural tempering order across three octaves you can derive the center point of the best pitch's possible across the whole piano.

I have a digital cents differential tuning system that uses feedback loops to derive the stretch. That way very little accumulated error can occur as can happen when you tune to a stretch curve. It doesn't work very well with electronic tuners that force you to always tune in chromatic steps.

EdMcMorrow,
TuneLab might work very well in your system.
There is a continuous readout in tenths of a cent, changing over the decay of the note.
My eye is constantly attracted to the moving numbers. I find myself trying to monitor four different indicators at once.

Ed Sutton, you are making it much harder than it is

It's probably just a matter of getting used to it. After a week you will wonder what the fuss was about.

The various parts of the display are useful for different things. You don't have to monitor all the indicators at once.

My basic steps for tuning a piano with TuneLab:

1) Create a new tuning from the file dialogue

2) Measure inharmonicity of relevant notes

3) Adjust the Tuning Curve

4) Save the tuning

Then every time you want to tune that piano, for each note:

5) Choose that note in TuneLab

6) Play the note. Start by finding your note in the spectrum display. The cents display can of course guide you by telling you whether the note is flat or sharp and by how much, but concentrate on the spectrum display. Tune the note in the correct direction until it is close to center red line. By then, the phase display should be slower moving and begin filling up with yellow. From then on, forget the spectrum display. Concentrate only on the phase display. Get it to stand still and all filled with yellow. If course, the cents display will approach zero, but forget it. The phase display is more accurate and intuitive. Just think of the different spectrum display as being the coarse indicator telling you roughly where you need to go. As soon as you get close, the phase display is the fine indicator allowing you to fine-tune precisely.

All this becomes mindlessly simple for you after a short while.

Of course there are a lot of different uses for the indicators and a lot of other features. I recommend reading the manual

PinkFloyd-
Sorry to frustrate you! ;-)
I'm an information freak, and find it very hard to overlook some interesting numbers when they're offered.
Did you know that if you strike a tuning fork about 30 times (letting it decay between strikes), it will drop in pitch about 0.2 cents? It's in a wooden resonator box, so this is probably due to heat caused by friction between the molecules. That's why I watch those numbers! ;-)

I mostly use the spectrum to begin, then the strobe lines. I'm more interested on tuning stability using the ETD as a tool - for example after a hard staccato "test" note, the display tells you right away if you set the pin/string correctly. The spectrum can be more useful in the high register as sampling time is very short there. And since I tune the wound strings by ear, I can use the offset numbers shown to enter them manually afterwards, so that the graph display is "zeroed" for them next time.