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I have the trial version of tunelab. I also have a RCT in a mac laptop. I haven't gotten past A 440 in tunelab. I was going to try it on an S&S M that was restored a few years ago but I went to calibrate to my fork which I know is 440 at 72*F but the graph wouldn't calibrate to 440. I stopped the things and it moved the graph to the center but It kept saying the fork was 438. I turned on the RCT and the fork is right on.

How come tunelab wouldn't reset the scale/graph to read the proper pitch?

Hi Keith,

Open the tuning file that says "NIST 303-499-7111." Click on "440." It should say "calibrate to external ref." Tap on or click on that. That will give you a directions page.

I calibrated mine to the 440 pitch given by the NIST number. It's kind of a pain to wait for the right pitch, but the times of each pitch should be listed on the manual.

IT took me awhile, too. At one point I thought I had it calibrated, but it was 7 cents #. I thought my fork was off, so I spent the better part of a week tuning pianos close to 442....:-)

Good luck!

If you have a trusted source for A=440-I used my Peterson VSAM in tone generator mode-you can also lock onto that pitch. I did verify that the VSAM was generating A440 with both an SAT and SOT and one of my Conn ST11's. The process I used:

1. Plug mic into laptop and start Tunelab Pro.
2. (After verifying the pitch source) Start tone generator. Note: I'm not sure your fork will have enough sustain for this process.
3. Press the "." button to begin the pitch lock.
4. When Tunelab stabilizes its reading, then press "esc".
5. Now click on
File >Calibration >Calibrate to External Reference.

Now your laptop is calibrated with Tunelab. You can check the calibration by clicking
Help >About this version

Your calibration is listed as "Actual Sample Rate." You should be good to go. It is only slightly different for the Tunelab Pocket.

Hope this helps.

Hi Keith,

I forgot to say that if you are using a Pocket PC modify a few steps from above. Here is the same sequence for Tunelab Pocket

1. Start Tunelab Pocket.
2. (After verifying the pitch source) Start tone generator. Note: I'm not sure your fork will have enough sustain for this process.
3. Press the "padlock" icon to begin the pitch lock. If it says it is waiting for a trigger just tap the padlock icon a second time
4. When Tunelab Pocket stabilizes its reading, then tap "A4" in the center of the screen. In the upper right hand section of the display should be locked-in offset.
5. Now tap once on the Hz reading. A menu will pop up.
6. Tap on "Calibrate to Eternal Ref.

Now your PDA is calibrated with Tunelab Pocket. You can check the calibration by tapping on:
Help >About Tunelab Pocket

John Dutton
Billings, MT

No Pocket PC for me yet. I can't stand the small screens. I'm setting up a nice desktop laptop that will have my client manager, peachtree accounting with job costing, email invoicing and tuning programs too. I set it on a music stand. It also is a marketing tool that I can show clients the stuff I am talking about, high speed pics etc.
Then with sonic DSL I have a dial up with numbers across the US. I also have wifi so coffee shops are a great stop. Why this way? All my files will back up automatically to a web based cache. If lost, broken or stolen I can go buy a laptop and the programs and reload in a day and be back 100%, no stress.

Look ma, no glasses!

almost every electronic (quartz) metronome with a function to produce A4=440Hz tone, it can produce a trustable 440Hz, even these very low price product. I have never find a quartz metronome cannot produce 440 less accurate than 1 cent yet.

But many tuners demand better than 1 cent accuracy. If you do not have any better source for pitch, and you don't want to call NIST, this is what I would suggest: Go into any store that sells high-quality electronic keyboards. Their A440 is adjusted at the factory more accurately than the tone generators in electronic metronomes. Just use the display models (after explaining to the salesperson what you are doing) and do a calibration right there in the store. Of course is may not be practical if you are using a laptop computer, but it would be very easy to calibrate a Pocket PC this way. After doing a calibration, sample the pitch of some of the other display models in the store to see how similar they are and to check that you did not happen to use some oddball keyboard to do your calibration.

Robert Scott
Ypsilanti, Michigan

On the other hand, 1% is certainly accurate enough for music. What matters is that everyone is more or less the same. The real point of this discussion should be how to set whatever device you are using to whatever instrument you have to tune to.

Once you get beyond the initial pitch, then you need accuracy. But few people will be able to tell the difference between 440 and 440 plus or minus one cent.

I do not know why 440 from a metronome would be any different from a keyboard. Keyboards often are not tuned particularly well.

Dear Robert
I do not think a e-keybroad can generate A440 that accurate than a quartz metronome. Especially these hige-quality kyboards, while most of then sampling from real instruments.

A couple of years ago I tested like twenty or thirty metronomes in my physics lab by a cymometer, all of them within 0.05Hz errors. (0.2cent in A440?)

Dear Bob, a cent shouldn't be 1 percent

You are correct; I wrote it erroneously and then figured that a cent is about .25 Hz at A 440, about 0.01%. As I said, it is not significant for musical purposes.

Tunelab calibration with the tuning fork is workable.

1. Plug mic into laptop and start Tunelab Pro.
2. Strick your fork and bring it against the microphone.
3. Press the "." button twice to begin the pitch lock. (first "." time for manual trigger, second "." for locking)
4. When Tunelab stabilizes its reading, then press "esc".
5. Now click on
File >Calibration >Calibrate to External Reference. Enter the 440 hz.

The only problem I found with this method is the deviation of 440Hz cause by temperature. A free reference source I found is to use the telephone dial tone which should be very accurate. I have tested in my country with 425Hz dial tone by holding the microphone against the phone speaker and then remeasure my tuning fork and found that it actually resonances at 439.5hz