Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Do Cybertunings and aural tunings benefit from tweaking?

In a recent discussion about tuning strategy Kees wrote:



Do you agree with what Kees wrote, as quoted above, or do you think any good ETD or aural tuning can be improved by fine tuning, meaning small adjustments to adapt it to the vagaries the piano?

Yesterday I happened to see this (rather long) YouTube movie of the iRCT Class Chicago 2013:



Cybertuner presumably does what Kees says as it samples 6 notes. There were several aural tuners in the audience. If you are one of them it would be very interesting to hear your opinion of the various smart tuning options and octave tuning styles. Likewise if you use another ETD.

I used to have a Petrof studio which has a wild 3rd partial in the note G3, with negative iH, that is the partial has a lower frequency than its corresponding harmonic. When tuned with an ETD this note G3 sounds mistuned (I tried with Verituner and Tunelab) but it can be tweaked aurally to get good sounding intervals by making some compromises.

Thoughtful extension, Withindale..

I agree with Kees here and I think there's clear logic behind his opinion. It's the way tuning machines are designed, and I think it holds true for most intents and purposes. All of the professional tuning machines will produce great sounding tunings if operated by a competent person. No one can complain.

The difference in aural tuning, using small variations that defer to zones in the piano, and/or points of best fit for temperament partials, is small. The effect can be additive and substantial, but only if incredible attention to detail is given to the process by a competent person.

Having said that, I'm going to machine tuning more these days. I have been reminded of the enormous amount of time and energy they save, while doing an excellent job and lowering stress. It's really not worth putting out 3-4 times the energy if the work is not necessary or beneficial.

I know almost all technicians will advocate making small corrections (not just in ideal, but in experience) to what the machine dictates. The errors are not large, but they are there. Whether it's worth correcting those errors is more a question of who you are working for and what level of result is required.

There are also piano-specific variations, which can influence the best approach to take..

One variation is, a tuner who tunes mostly uprights will usually say that machine tuning with smooth curves is better. There's so many errors in the lower partials, that it's often better to go off of the upper partials and assume they all follow that order, rather than sort out a puzzle that isn't worth sorting. The benefit is usually very low because the iH is restrictive.

Another variation is the low-tension vs. high-tension scale. A lower tension scale will yield more rich partial variations, whereas a higher tension scale will almost always be more regular and clinical. The latter is best tuned just using a machine. Not much thought is required when tuning these instruments aurally anyway.

A third variation is spectral envelope. This is more associated with the size of the instrument than anything else. Pianos with lower iH and richer envelopes (read higher number of audible partials, greater average partial bandwidth and amplitude), lead to much more flexible choices in tuning. These instruments are really the ones worth the time that an aural tuning takes.

In these instruments there's enormous room for movement comparatively, which can be done with more precision. Tone color can really be shifted and brought out, or subdued. Voicing choices can be made in the tuning process. There may even be a great soundboard resonance you can take advantage of by tuning to a different partial aurally in the bass, and you can only find that out by listening..

Rafael, I suppose the general point from your Petrof is that an ETD which relies on samples is bound to miss things. Whether an ETD should be able to cope with notes like that G3 is a moot point. I might be inclined to put up a "Please fix those strings" message. All credit to you for fixing the tuning.

Thank you very much, Tunewerk, for your comprehensive answer.

As you may have noticed in another thread I somewhat rashly said I would see what I can make of Prout's measurements on his BB. This is purely out of interest and the method of successive approximations I have in mind should give a reasonable estimate of the small differences you mention. I was going to add "if it works" but the patterns you describe indicate that it should.

I use TuneLab and Tunic OnlyPure. I'm not an aural tuner and never have been, however I do tune all my unisons by ear. I find that the area I need to be careful in (with both ETD's) is the bass section. I always check the octaves from the plain string to the wound. Many times what the ETD is telling me I don't like and change it to sound right to me. More often this happens on spinets. Sometimes the change I make is as much as 5 cents difference from the ETD. That seems significant. So, even though I'm a firm believer in ETD's I would have to say that, yes, any tuning, aural or electronic, can be improved upon. Is it worth the time and will it be noticed by the customer? Most times probably not, but it makes me feel better ;-)

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. About why I have never, ever tuned a piano with an ETD. About why I use ETD's to test students. I am now using computers to develop a method that allows the human ear and brain to work like a computer, making calculated judgments and decisions based on input.

I'm just having a lot of fun. It's fun for me to tweak my aural tunings, as I'm sure it must be fun for some ETD tuners to tweak their ETD tunings. It's like a little Rubic's cube. It pulls you in and you end up spending hours thinking about it, doing it, redoing it, and before you know it, you've lost track of time.

Sounds like an excellent reason to tune aurally. Mr Scott and Mr Reyburn have fun making an ETD that tunes like an aural tuner and you and Jeff have fun trying to tune like a machine.

I get double the fun because I'm interested in scientific approaches to and understanding of both aural and machine tuning.

Only once did I have to make corrections to an ETD tuning. Rather large corrections, I turned the damn thing off! I tried to set a 1/13' well temperament I designed on a Wurlitzer spinet but the ETD tuned temperament octave did not have the correct good, bad, and ugly M3's that I wanted. It may have been fine for ET, but it was so far off for my purposes that I gave up and tuned by ear.

Kees