Hi all. I know I'm a few days late on this discussion, but after reading some comments here, I feel compelled to add my 2 cents. I also want you to know that my experience with ETDs is limited to just one, and I do not have an understanding of how the others work. A few years ago, after talking to Dave Andersen and Tom Servinsky, I started on my quest to 'tune like Virgil'. I find Virgil a fascinating study in accuracy, spot-on unisons, and the ability to do all that while teaching a class is just phenomenal. I always felt my best aural tunings were as good or better than the tunings I was getting from my ETD. Cocky? no. Confident. I learned how to tune aurally from using my ETD as my guide, but after watching Virgil, hearing what he was producing, and talking to those techs, I realized I was woefully behind those techs in my personal quest to bring each piano I service to its pinnacle. I better mention that Larry Crabb might be a tad upset with me if I didn't mention his influence and his involvement in my development of aural tuning. He taught me what to listen for, and how to test. A few years pass while I'm on my quest to sound like Virgil, Dave, and others that I felt were steps ahead of me aurally..always asking questions, and trying to listen and hear what I was missing in my tunings.. ..then I heard Tunic. I remember hearing Bernhard's example that he shared on pianotech..a piece in Bmin. - and I remember thinking..oh my..that's it. There were some comments that his sample was a nicely tuned piano with a good voice attached to it. I could not have disagreed more. What I heard was a tuning that transcended anything I had heard before from a ETD, or was able to produce consistently aurally. Last year in Anaheim, Dave Andersen was there with a piano..so was the Ranvenscroft. Both of these instruments impressed me with their clarity and translucent voice. I forget which one, but I believe one of those pianos was tuned using Tunic. As a new RVP, the majority of my time was tied up, literally!, in meetings, so I was not able to take in all that Anaheim had to offer. I met up with Bernhard in the lobby..on Sunday..as people are leaving from their Convention experience, I'm finally getting to mine, and it's with a developer that shared with me 'the sound' I was after. After talking with Bernhard for 1.5 hrs., I agreed to purchase his software as soon as I was able. It took me 2 months to save up the money, and it has been a fabulous journey since then. My older ETD, while a trustworthy instrument and faithful tool, has been relegated to strictly pitch raises and poorly-scaled pianos. It has been replaced with Bernhards OnlyPure software, because the results that are produced with this software turns heads. I still tune aurally once in awhile, but Bernhard Stopper has developed the software that Virgil Smith has been hearing all his life. I would have never guessed that a piece of piano tuning software would ever be able to produce Virgil Smith-type tunings without alot of tweaking and gnashing of teeth with the software. With Tunic, you turn it on, and go. I does not get any simpler than that. The results turns heads. -Phil Bondi(Fl)
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