I currently tune by ear in 5ths, 4ths, and octaves but Still have trouble perfecting the beats/pulses evenly. I want some tuning sofeware to help me get this down so that I can do it all by ear.

I'm looking for a website to download a FREE piano tuning software. Where could I go?

Thanks in Advance

You might want to try Tunelab. www.tunelab-world.com

TuneLab 97 is shareware, only $30, and an excellent value. The others are trial versions.

--Cy--

Cy and GPM,
What is the difference (besides ~300.00) between regular Tunelab and Tunelab 97? And which would you recommend?

Mark

I highly recommend TuneLab Pocket. TuneLab Pro has the same features, it's just designed for Windows, while Pocket works on Pocket PCs. Dragging a laptop around gets old in a hurry, unless you have one of those tiny paperback-sized ones.

Pocket has many more features than 97 (nine years of improvements): better pitch raise, note measuring, note switching, tuning curve editing, pitch display, and on and on.

Find a used iPaq or other Pocket PC on eBay or elsewhere (I got mine for $75), and for less than $400, you've spent less money than the software alone for any other ETD.

--Cy--

The biggest difference is that tunelab97 doesn't really come up with a tuning calculation for you. It works well as a lab for the experienced tech that knows what sort of relationships between octaves they prefer. It's a great research tool... But it can be used to measure, or just enterthe numbers from another tuning source.

There used to be a plug-in available that could be used to calculate a tuning based on some preliminary sound measurements.

The newer version is way more user-friendly.

There is nifty software for piano tuning, audio testing and even an ocean waves simulator at:
http://www.katsurashareware.com/

All this is for Mac, if you have one. If not, why not?

The "Calculate" plugin is still available. In fact, I'm hosting it on my own website, with David Porritt's permission. You get to it from Tunelab World.

97 is a great, cheap way to get started by experimenting with your own piano.

Pocket or Pro is what you need to tune professionally, IMNSHO.

--Cy--

Does the pocket version have the bars that converge when you get within one cent of pitch? It kind of looked to me from pictures like it doesn't. In my very limited experience with TuneLab Pro laptop I tended to pay a lot of attention to getting those bars at least halfway together.

I already have enough to do more sophisticated ETD stuff like calculations, but suppose I wanted to just get into a pocket PC as cheaply as possible, with the intent only of doing simple partial matches and stuff like that: What differences would there be between 97 and Pro or Pocket?

Thanks,

Jeff

Yes.
TuneLab 97 doesn't run at all on a Pocket PC. It requires Windows, which means a laptop or a desktop. If you want a Pocket PC, you must get the Pocket version.

You can download all the documentation at www.tunelab-world.com.

--Cy--

Supply wrote:

Now why can't they write something like that for Windows? Has anyone tried it? If so, what are the results like?

GP

http://www.katsurashareware.com/

Looking at the webpage, this is just a simple non-measuring type of tuner. Kindof just a fancy strobe tuner. Nothing special there for pianos...

Even if you never use it for tuning, I suggest that every person interested in learning about tuning download one of the TuneLab versions and spend some time with it.

Zooming out the spectrum view to give you a complete oscilloscope-like view of a note and all its partials is a great way to see visually what it is you're trying to tune. It helped me a lot.

You can see how bass notes have lots of partials, but little or no fundamental, and how treble notes are opposite.


This peak is the fundamental. If you zoom out this display, you'd see one or two more partials.

Any cheap microphone works fine.

--Cy--

I have noticed that after voicing the tuning sounds a bit askew. Is that a common phenomena?

It is not really germane to the topic, but voicing changes the emphasis of the various partials, which in turn can affect how you hear the relationship of one note to another. If you had been tuning to make one partial sound better, and that partial is now not as loud, it may be that you need to retune so that you are no longer compensating for that partial.

Also, I think that change the voicing can affect some inharmonic overtones, particularly in the bass of the piano. This may not be inharmonicity as usually defined by a physicist, but something related to the initial conditions of the excitation of the string, which is what is manipulated by voicing, after all. It is a subject that deserves more study.

Ron, I thought the PianoTuner was a bit more sophisticated...you're right, after carefully reading it again, I don't think it calibrates stretch etc.

GP