While the ETDs do each have their own way of dealing with the breaks the problem is that the position of the inharmonicity breaks and level of deviations vary and the machines settings don't unless you change them. I say this being an ETD user (I don't leave home without it) but I also recognize their limitations. I've used the Verituner as well. It's a terrific machine with lots of options for custom settings as you've outlined below with Ron K's settings and for those who like the style it offers I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. I too experimented with various custom settings on the Verituner but it comes down to this. There really isn't one stretch setting that works for everything so you have to decide which of the many that are available you will use. But the decision is somewhat arbitrary until you tune the piano and find either that it works or that it doesn't. While some pianos are much more forgiving for "universal" settings most that we encounter on a day to day basis are not. At least not if we are seeking the highest level of tuning accuracy. By that I mean what we would do based on what our ears tell us if we were really listening carefully. Clearly with many machines you can get a very passable tuning with a calculated curve. But not always, and not predictably. Ultimately that's why I gave up the VT and went back to the SATIII. Not because the VT wasn't a great machine delivering on a lot of promises or because the SATIII is a better machine, but because I found that no matter what I used I needed to keep a careful ear to what was going on in order to make those corrections that invariably are picked out by the customer when you least expect it. For me, the SATIII was just simpler to work with for that particular style. YMMV. Though unscientific, I find it interesting to note that the only complaints I've ever gotten about tunings (at least that I heard about) came when I tuned a strictly machine tuning and did not pay attention or do my due diligence with aural checks. The machines definitely have their benefits and strengths as have been cited and, as I mentioned, I use them on every tuning. But without consistent aural checks and the inevitable corrections that must be made to the calculated curve, they can disappoint. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 3:00 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] using as ETD On Apr 13, 2010, at 3:01 PM, Ron Overs wrote: The ETD's stretch calculation is based on the inharmonicity following a geometric curve, Actually, this is a misconception, which may be somewhat more true of some ETDs than others, but fails to understand the "magic" of a smooth geometric curve _at a particular partial level_. It is the fact that the 6th partial is being tuned (as one of the options) that smoothes out the break as a starting point. The fundamentals jump around a bit across the break, while the partials in their smooth progress make the intervals "work out" pretty darned well. This is what the SAT does on its own without any fudging (and there are methods to fudge to make the thirds progress better if that is desired). Other ETDs have various other methods of dealing with breaks, some of which are pretty sophisticated and emulate what an aural tuner would be trying to do. I'll quote here from Ron Koval's recent post on the Verituner and the "Schubert tuning": A0 12:6 75% / 6:3 25% G#1 8:1 100% A1 4:1 80% / 6:3 20% These are user presets that ask the machine to compromise between a couple possible ways of tuning an individual note, giving precedence at some ratio, much like we might favor a 12th over a double octave, but not want to go so far as to make the 2:1 octave too wide (or something along those lines, the point not being the intervals I chose as examples, but the process of compromise). In any case, at this point one simply can't make broad generalizations about "ETD tunings" any more than about "Aural tunings." ETDs can be used in so many ways, and they have so many sophisticated options built in, that someone who understands them can do anything using the ETD that an aural tuner can do. In fact, that was true to a lesser extent going way back to the Sight-O-Tuner, except that there wasn't the calculating ability built in that makes it all so much faster today. Bottom line, it depends on the operator, whether using ears or using ETDs. Anyone claiming that either "method," in and of itself, is superior, or is bound to lead to superior results, is mistaken, IMO. OTOH, I have been using ETDs for 15 years now, and personally I can claim with utter assurance that I produce much better and more consistent tunings using an ETD, which is not to say I wasn't pretty proud of my aural skills. But that is just because I find that using a tool makes life easier and more precise, like maybe I might find using a ruler better for creating a straight line than eyeballing it. When it comes to tuning, the ruler analogy has to be modified to note that we aren't dealing with a plane surface, and some calculation is in needed in order to make the line "look straight." So it has to be a "smart ruler," which is what modern ETDs are. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100416/3b052eb8/attachment.htm>
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