Software Guitar Tuner?

[Football]

Know any good (or great) software guitar tuners for OSX?

I am using the Bomb Factory tuner but it is extraordinarily horrible.


Thank you

[max cooper]

I don't know if it's good, but check out the Peterson Strobe Tuner that's got a thread going in 'New Products'.

I still vote for the Korg DTR-1.

Not everything has to happen in the computer!

I keep a hardware send patched to the tuner so it may be accessed from any channel.

[Football]

You are right Max, I should have a hardware tuner hooked up.

I have one of my hardware tuners at a studio about an hour or so from here and my other one I can't find.

I will search again this morning.

That Peterson Tuner looks interesting.

Thank you

[Ruudman]

I vote for Korg or Boss when you need standard tuning
real fast. Peterson are more advanced, but the Korg/Boss
say: "this is about it, good enough for rock'n roll"


ruudman

[Dysanfel]

Any more software tuners? My 12 string acoustic runs through a DAW when I play live and a AU or VST tuner would be great.

[mikethedrummer]

Run a normal boss pedal in the chain before the computer?

I highly doubt this will help your situation,
but as far as tuning goes when tracking in the studio..
I run a boss pedal with the bypass and regular output. One goes DI into my computer clean, the other goes to my live room to the guitar amp. This allows you to see the guitar track more like a drum kit, as opposed to the compressed to hell line of fuzz. You can pick out the transients, time align more stuff, etc. Also when things go south you can now easily reamp!

Really, this will not help you at all live though, so sorry.

Kinda sucks that little boy daws like garage band have built in tuners and PTLE doesn't. (or one that works..)
GB has amp models, better distortion plugs, even multiband compression built in... We get dverb and air plug ins that ruin everything that hits them.

[FireMoon]

The Tuner in the Ampeg bass sim by IK is very good.

[Faderjockey]

Hardware but great unit..

Strobe Tuners by Sonic Research - Turbo Tuner Home Page

With true bypass..

[matt thomas]

I use the Peterson. It is great. It sometimes gets confused if you change sample rates without resetting though, but you don't do that often, otherwise I can't think of any downsides

matt

[Disjointed]

try AP tuner

its a nice little chromatic tuner, with guitar sensibilities

+1

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by Football

Know any good (or great) software guitar tuners for OSX?

I am using the Bomb Factory tuner but it is extraordinarily horrible.


Thank you

You don't state version, but assuming you've got PT8, you have TL Intune as well. don't know how good it is, but it can't be worse than the BF one.

[Diktatoren]

Originally Posted by matt thomas

I use the Peterson. It is great. It sometimes gets confused if you change sample rates without resetting though, but you don't do that often, otherwise I can't think of any downsides

matt

+1 on the Peterson! Soo much better than the gearbox tuner or any of the other tuners I've used. I wish I could afford the rack version as well, for gig use.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Disjointed

try AP tuner

its a nice little chromatic tuner, with guitar sensibilities

+1

The AP Tuner is a good little shareware tuner. (And not badly suited for keyboard work, perhaps, because of its different stretch options.) Also good calibration options (displays as frequency and cents above or below 440).

It comes with Equal and 6 other temperaments, with 8 different optional stretch tables.

Downside: the version I have could use more dampening options. (The designer made some interesting choices. Not sure I'd do it the same way. But I can work with it pretty easily.)

Worse downside for some: it's only available for Windows.


The calibration options came in handy for me since I wanted this little tuner app to work with my system audio (a mobo based SB clone chip) and, while I had long realized that device and my work converter, a MOTU 828mkII were 'out of tune' (well, actually, no air quotes required; pretty literally, out of tune), I didn't realize they were ~35 cents out of tune. But I just used a test tone through the MOTU to calibrate the AP Tuner to (using a typical 'skype mic' to pick up the test tone over the CR speakers). So it was pretty slick.

[Boy, but did that hit home why it's necessary to sync crystal-clock controlled digital devices. 35 cents! Of course, one would like to think the MOTU is the accurate one and the mobo-chip's crystal was sliced by trianed monkeys, but, in reality, the difference is no doubt split someplace between them.]

[a.beck]

Am I going crazy, or has Digi/Avid removed the BF Tuner (which I quite like and use regularly) from PT8LE? I've just re-installed this on my MacBook (replaced by Apple last week for a faulty logic board), and of the mono BF "Essential" RTAS stuff, only BF76, Meter Bridge, and Noise Meter are there - no tuner (no Masterizer either, but I won't miss that one).

What gives?

Of course I've tried finding it on Avid.com, but that place is still a bit of a trainwreck.

[hobson]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

You don't state version, but assuming you've got PT8, you have TL Intune as well. don't know how good it is, but it can't be worse than the BF one.

Decent and Functional. Free too AFAIK.


Posted via the Gearslutz iPhone app

[Dysanfel]

I would buy an accurate and low CPU usage AU/VST tuner for OSX. Hopefully Live 9 will have one.

[Zorran]

peterson strobosoft. software strobe tuning accurate upto 1/10th of a cent as opposed to 1 cent on korg racks. thats 10 times.

[travisbrown]

I use this sometimes: katsura shareware - for creative Mac OS X users

or Peterson, but way too much if all you need is a simple guitar tuner.

I use the Peterson app on my iPhone 90% of the time now. 5% of the time I use software on my DAW, and 5% of the time I use a tuning fork or concert bell.

Does Peterson work with Snow Leopard yet? Didn't for a long time.

[bogosort]

Originally Posted by theblue1

The calibration options came in handy for me since I wanted this little tuner app to work with my system audio (a mobo based SB clone chip) and, while I had long realized that device and my work converter, a MOTU 828mkII were 'out of tune' (well, actually, no air quotes required; pretty literally, out of tune), I didn't realize they were ~35 cents out of tune. But I just used a test tone through the MOTU to calibrate the AP Tuner to (using a typical 'skype mic' to pick up the test tone over the CR speakers). So it was pretty slick.

[Boy, but did that hit home why it's necessary to sync crystal-clock controlled digital devices. 35 cents! Of course, one would like to think the MOTU is the accurate one and the mobo-chip's crystal was sliced by trianed monkeys, but, in reality, the difference is no doubt split someplace between them.]

Am I reading you correctly: your converters are out of tune?? I never considered that an ADC could affect pitch. I can't imagine that a 1 kHz sine wave would be that badly distorted by an ADC that it would come out a different frequency on the other end. What's the story here?

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by bogosort

Am I reading you correctly: your converters are out of tune?? I never considered that an ADC could affect pitch. I can't imagine that a 1 kHz sine wave would be that badly distorted by an ADC that it would come out a different frequency on the other end. What's the story here?

Nope, you got it!

In this case, you can analogize sample rate to tape or grooved disk speed.

What happens if you play a 33-1/3 rpm LP at 45 rpm? Chipmunk city, right? (Or we can make it an even double -- an octave higher -- if we can find a turntable that played at the nonstandard rate of 66-2/3.) Well, same thing happens if you play back a track originally recorded with a sample rate of 44.1 at 88.2 kHz. The duration of playback is halved and the pitch doubled.

At the heart of an ADC is a timing circuit (clock) that derives its clocking from the oscillations of a crystal of very precise mass. But it's very, very rare when two crystals have precisely the same number of molecules so finding even two high precision crystals that vibrate at exactly the same rate is unlikely -- which is why we have to synchronize multiple converters when we use them in tandem -- otherwise you get drift that, no matter how tiny, will eventually result in problems.


In my case, I already knew those two converters were 'out of tune' -- and pretty far -- but when I measured I was shocked it was so high. (Maybe I haven't had enough coffee to do the math right but I'm thinking off hand that 35 cents is just over 2.9% [Octave=100%; 1200 cents to the octave -- back in the day, cassette decks were typically spec'd at +/- 2%, a window of 4%, if you will.])


Now, happily, my 'good' converters in my MOTU 828mkII and my cheapo Canon snap/vid cam match up much, much closer... I'm able to fly in 3 or 4 minutes of 'properly' recorded audio into a single cam vid without any deal-breaking timing drift issues.

(And I should probably, if only for idle curiosity's sake, test the old Echo Mia I have taking up a slot in my tower [Why 3 converters attached to one box? Hmm... You can't have too many converters in one computer? OK, how about intertia? It's in there. I'd have to do work to pull it out. And it ain't broken and occasionally I have even used it.])


But, yeah... wild, huh? For sure, the motherboard Sound Blaster clone AD/DA is where I presume the greatest inaccuracy is. But it is handy to have that interface as my 'normal' everyday interface (which keeps the cold clammy hands of the system off my 'pro' converter) but it cracks me up, in 2010, that I'm confronted by the bane of my middle school years, when I couldn't ever seem to keep my old Garrard turntable running at the right speed. (At least the SB clone doesn't drift in time.)


FWIW, when crystal controlled digital watches first popped up in the mid 70s, I found it amusing that my brand new, ultra-high-tech digital watch was actually far less accurate than the then 25 year old spring driven Omega I'd inherited from my grandfather. (A slim self-winder, it still works great.)

[bogosort]

Originally Posted by theblue1

Well, same thing happens if you play back a track originally recorded with a sample rate of 44.1 at 88.2 kHz. The duration of playback is halved and the pitch doubled.

Hmm, this doesn't seem right to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong but a sample is just a measurement of the signal at the instant it was taken. Because the signal is a voltage that varies over time, the more samples you take, the more accurate the representation. But the measurement taken, once taken, is fixed. Therefore, adding more or less measurements won't change the value of the previous sample.

I would think that trying to play a signal recorded at 44.1 kHz through an 88.2 kHz DAC clock would result in garbage coming out, not the original audio with duration halved and pitch doubled.

Am I way off here?

[Dubai]

Sonar Producer has a Tuner, not sizeable.
Logic 8 Pro has a Tuner, cant remember.
Cubase/Nuendo/Reaper/Samplitude/Tracktion probably also not sizeable.
IK Multimedia Amplitube has a tuner

not all tuners have same software accuracy, also the software/digital tuners depends on the soundcard clock accuracy.

AES11-2003 Aes Grade 1 master clock, gives "perfect tuning" at 440Hz, (only human error possible.)
clock drift affects very much the lower frequencies: 50Hz - 220Hz,
but from 440Hz to 1Khz its ok with most pro soundcards, over 1Khz to 5Khz its also affected.

the best software Tuners arent designed to detect over 5.5Khz,
they are designed to use lower sample rates like 11Khz, because the clock jitter & clock drift,
but working at 11Khz is less accurate.

The best... Sizeable Tuner:
AP Tuner + Drawmer M-Clock
AP Tuner for Windows

an atomic clock could give better tuning at lower frequencies.

you must test your soundcard clock drift with a software generated 440Hz 16-Bit .wav sine wave,
making a DA-->AD loop, or AES.out4-->AES.in4, or s/pdif loop or ADAT loop.

WindowsMediaPlayer--->DA-->AD-->AP Tuner.

you must select Windows Default Sound Drivers for playback and recording, selecting drivers inside AP Tuner does not work in Vista.
also you must set 44.1khz in AP Tuner every time you start in Vista.

for example:
RME hdsp9632 SteadyClock(TM) has -2 cents dips every 30 seconds.
Lynx AES16 + LS-ADAT has a very weird +/-2cents each second IF ADAT input clock is different than master clock selected in AES16.

most consumer/laptop souncards have 1/10 cent off,
AP Tuner has a drift software calibration, but only works well for 440Hz.

making a DA-->AD loop test is very affected by noise floor, some laptops soundcards are useless, or if too noisy enviroment when usign a mic.

Clock Drift::
Drawmer M-Clock has: 44.1000 *when calibrated.
Apogee Big Ben has: 44.1002 - 44.1003
RME SteadyClock(TM) has: 44.1005 - 44.1008
Lynx AES16 SynchroLock(TM) has: 44.0996 or less.
Roland vs2480cd / MMP-2 has: 44.1010

anything around 0.1% drift: 44.1044 or 44.0559 works ok for 440Hz / 1Khz,.

Grade 1 clock (±1ppm) at 44.1 kHz will fall between 44.0999559 and 44.1000441 kHz.
At 96 kHz, ±1 PPM represents a range between: 95.999904 to 96.000096 kHz.
...

G-Tune software was ok, had a bit strange jitter, but a nice strobosoft tuner.
JHC Software Limited

[theblue1]

Dubai... Thanks for the add'l info and correlations! I'll plow through that later. (Glad to see you like AP Tuner [for Win], too.)

Originally Posted by bogosort

Hmm, this doesn't seem right to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong but a sample is just a measurement of the signal at the instant it was taken. Because the signal is a voltage that varies over time, the more samples you take, the more accurate the representation. But the measurement taken, once taken, is fixed. Therefore, adding more or less measurements won't change the value of the previous sample.

I would think that trying to play a signal recorded at 44.1 kHz through an 88.2 kHz DAC clock would result in garbage coming out, not the original audio with duration halved and pitch doubled.

Am I way off here?

An individual sample is, indeed, a simple voltage measurement. We take x number of these measures every second.

Obviously, the clock used in timing those samples is critical to the even spacing of those samples -- but that (at least in the case of a standalone converter) is the easy part. A crystal of a given mass will vibrate (in the presence of almost any surrounding molecular activity -- heat, if you will -- ) at a specific rate that correlates pretty much directly to the number of molecules in the crystal.

(As long as we don't have to wrap a phase-locked loop circuit around that to 'pull' the frequency to match an incoming master clock rate, that crystal will give 'rock steady' frequency... maybe not the right frequency... but as long as its mass doesn't change, its oscillating frequency won't either. [I'm no physicist by a million light years -- I would have been a poetry/creative writing major had I thought it important to matriculate -- so, you know, grain-o-salt time, here.])


Anyhow... that's recording. On playback we still need a clock to time the 'playback' of all the samples we collected in recording. If the crystal at the heart of the clock circuit oscillates at a higher frequency than the one used during recording, the samples will be played back more rapidly, and the frequency of the sounds created by that playback will rise. Precisely analogous to speeding up an analog tape or grooved disk.

[You can demonstrate this to yourself pretty easily if you use a capable audio editor to reset the nominal sample rate of a given file by changing the header (the header only; ie, no resampling or other computated changes). If you have Sound Forge or some other editors, it's relatively easy to do.* Change a 44.1 SR file's sample rate specification in the header to 88.2 without otherwise resampling so it will play back at what is effectively double speed and, consequently pitch, ie, an octave higher. *In Sound Forge, go to the Properties menu/Format tab/Sample rate, change that up or down, click OK and listen to what happens.]


You might want to refer back to a write up on the Nyquist-Shannon Theorem. Wikipedia is sometimes a reasonable source on that: Nyquist

Or you might want to take a look at converter design maven Dan Lavry's explainer on the issue: http://www.lavryengineering.com/docu...ing_Theory.pdf

[craig9045]

not as advanced as some peoples, but everyone i record uses my planet waves tuner. Apart from breaking a few times its a solid tuner