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Hello Frank, can it be that the beta version drains the battery faster? Thanks for reporting this, Burkhard. I've analyzed the energy consumption and I've found a bug in the beta version which may be responsible for your observation. I have fixed it in build 783. Please check if this improves the behaviour.
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Juste went and tuned a Schiedmayer upright about 20 cents flat. I find it excellent to measure inharmonicity and pitch before pitch raising and tuning. The tuning turned out really good with very few notes to change after pitch raise. I am very impressed how quickly the whole process goes.
I usually do pitch raises with tunelab and fine tuning with verituner. I really dislike how verituner can only calculate pitch raising as you go. Seems like pianoscope is the best of both worlds. I am certainly considering buying it and making my goto app.
Congrats on a great app.
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Juste went and tuned a Schiedmayer upright about 20 cents flat. I find it excellent to measure inharmonicity and pitch before pitch raising and tuning. The tuning turned out really good with very few notes to change after pitch raise. I am very impressed how quickly the whole process goes.
I usually do pitch raises with tunelab and fine tuning with verituner. I really dislike how verituner can only calculate pitch raising as you go. Seems like pianoscope is the best of both worlds. I am certainly considering buying it and making my goto app.
Congrats on a great app. Thank you for the feedback, Jean! I am happy that you achieve such great results with pianoscope.
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Many customers requested a custom forum to discuss pianoscope related topics. So I have started one on the pianscope website under https://forum.pianoscope.appIt's still a bit empty there. So feel free to drop by and write something, if you like. I will of course also be available here in the pianoworld forum.
Last edited by Frank Illenberger; 02/25/22 11:34 AM.
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Many customers requested a custom forum to discuss pianoscope related topics. So I have started one on the pianscope website under https://forum.pianoscope.appIt's still a bit empty there. So feel free to drop by and write something, if you like. I will of course also be available here in the pianoworld forum. Just signed up - but noticed the confirmation email was marked by gmail as spam (just in case anyone else has any trouble). Paul
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I have just released pianoscope 1.5 to the App Store. Thanks again to all who tested the beta version. Your feedback was very valuable! These are the release notes: Changes:- Starting with version 1.5, pianoscope uses a new algorithm (v2) to calculate the current pitch in the tuning view. It makes the movements of the indicator and strobe much calmer, especially when tuning simpler pianos with many fluctuating partials. The new algorithm takes more partials into account and combines them in a different way. For some instruments, this may result in bass tones being tuned slightly flatter, but this is advantageous in these cases. If you want to use the old algorithm (v1) for compatibility with older tunings, you can activate it in the new compatibility section in the indicator settings.
New Features:- You can adjust the font size of the textual pitch display in the indicator settings.
- The header field showing a document’s concert pitch is displayed in bold if it differs from the default value. (pro only)
- On the pianoscope website, there is a new community forum where you can discuss all topics related to pianoscope. You can access it via the help menu in the app or directly under https://forum.pianoscope.app
- The document browser now offers a local pianoscope folder in which you can also put tuning documents. If you connect your iPhone or iPad to a Mac with a USB cable, you can access the contents of this folder via the Finder.
Fixed issues:- When pianoscope was started while a phone call was active, an error was presented.
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After reading a lot of praises in this thread, as well as watching the 2 hour demonstration seminar for Russian piano tuners on Youtube (I speak both languages), I was so eager to use Pianoscope to tune my piano today. Initially I was quite impressed, but in the end I'm not totally happy with the overall results.
A bit of history. Before I used a free app called TuneIt to tune the piano. It shows the frequency in Hz as well as deviation in cents of all the partials it can hear. I match the coincidental partials manually. Pure or wide/narrow 4:2/6:3 in the middle, 2:1 in the treble and 6:3 in the bass section. It does the job but the measurement of the higher partials isn't always stable. I got annoyed by having to mentally average the jumping numbers then tune to it, and also started questioning the accuracy of the tuning by doing so. So I decided to invest in a proper professional tuning app. I read about a lot of them: PianoMeter, Verituner, Tunelab, iRCT, PiaTune, OnlyPure and Pianoscope.
I own an Android phone so PianoMeter is the most affordable. The Plus version costs only $25. Tried it a couple of times. It's ok it doesn't give any customization to the tuning intervals unless I purchase the Pro version for $300. Verituner can freely customize the tuning intervals and is highly rated by many people but doesn't offer a trial version.
Tunelab is the next app I tried. It's almost free with full functions except for the 2 minute pauses after a while. However, the UI is quite ancient like from the last century. At that time, I learned about the pure 12th tuning method aka Stopper temperament and gave it a try using Tunelab. Using 3-part tuning: bass 6:3, middle 3:1 and treble 3:1, I was blown away by the results. I realize that the 2:1 octave tuning method doesn't stretch the treble section as much as the 3:1, which sounds a bit compressed and unexciting. With the 3:1 stretch, now the treble notes sing beautifully. I love the treble very much. However, I'm not satisfied with the bass section. No matter what option I try as per recommendations from another thread: 6:3, 8:4, 10:5, 8:2, the bottom 0-1 and 1-2 octaves always produce annoyingly loud beats. They say that the lowest section must be tuned aurally, which I'm terrible at. The way Tunelab works is, only the very bottom note (A0) is tuned by the specified interval for the bass section. Going up, it slowly morphs into the interval for the middle section by changing the weights e.g. 90% 6:3 - 100% 3:1, 70% 6:3 - 30% 3:1, etc..., until 0% 6:3 100% 3:1. There's no way to control the individual weights. Another issue is, by specifying 3:1 in both the middle and the treble sections, I suspect, it is pure 3:1 everywhere. There is no way to tune to a wide/narrow 3:1 if I need to. This is probably why, with the sustain pedal down, some single notes in the middle section produce loud rolling beats, because some intervals are tempered too much.
Pianoscope is the next app I wanted to try. I like the working principle: a globally optimized tuning that compromises different beating intervals, weighted by perceived loudness. It does what it promises: at the end of the tuning I can press down the sustain damper, play any note and it doesn't produce any annoying beats. The inharmonicity measurements are very fast like advertised. The iH constants of my bass strings jump around quite a bit while in Tunelab it's much smoother (Tunelab doesn't have a built in inharmonicity curve but I pull out the data to Excel to draw the curve myself). The orders of magnitude are also different, probably because one is in log scale and one is not. With Tunelab, I found that the iH constant depends on the volume of the sound: the louder I play the note, the higher the iH constant. I need to measure the iH constant 2-3 times with different dynamics to average it out. This isn't the case with Pianoscope. The readings seem stable regardless of the dynamics. However, Pianoscope doesn't display many significant digits. I wonder what value it actually uses and does it matter?
Playing around with different tuning styles, I found that Pianoscope gives less stretch in the treble section than Tunelab (3:1). Not by much, in the 6th octave it's like 1-2 cents. Trying to replicate the pure 3:1 tuning style, I gave all the other intervals the minimum weight (1%) and the 3:1 interval the maximum 100%. It's still less stretch than Tunelab 3:1. Not sure what it means. Probably because the 2:1 interval is so much stronger in the treble section that 1% of it still outweighs the 3:1 interval? I decided to go with the default Balanced style to see how good it is.
The first thing that impressed me very much is the Pitch Raise function. My piano isn't terribly out of tune with 2 cent flat at max for some notes. It is also due to the different between tuning curves produced by Tunelab and Pianoscope. After the first coarse pitch raise, I was quite surprised to see most of the notes are within 0.5 cents from target. Most of them are about 0.4 cents sharp, which is good because I can ease it down to target and further improve the stability. If they are flat I have to raise it sharper then ease flat again, which takes more time.
The bass section is so much better than Tunelab. The octaves are so much cleaner. They still produce beats but I know it's impossible to line up all the partials. Everything must be compromised. The middle section is ok. It doesn't differ much from the results produced by Tunelab. However, I find it quite hard to tune the higher treble section, from the end of the 5th octave and upward. The indicator jumps around a lot and the readings aren't stable. One of the reasons is my piano has a lot of false beats in this section. However, with the string that doesn't have false beats, the indicator is still unstable. I gave up tuning the 7th octave with Pianoscope. Tuning the high treble section with Tunelab is easier, because Tunelab has a spectrum showing the peak in Hz rather than in cents. At higher frequencies, the Hz gives more resolution than the cent.
Overall results. The basses are good. The octaves are clean. No notes producing beats while sustain pedal is down However, it doesn't have quite the "magic" feeling that the Tunelab 3:1 tuning gave me before. I don't know how to describe it but the sounds are a bit "sterile"? The chords aren't as "harmoniously" sounding? Something is off that I don't like that much. I remember the treble isn't stretch as much. Probably because of the weighting by perceived loudness mechanism, most of the treble is tuned to the 2:1 interval? Not sure what I want to do now. Maybe come back to Tunelab and marry it with Pianoscope somehow? Or train how to tune aurally properly but that will take a lot of time. Anyway, this is my feedback after tuning with Pianoscope.
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Hello HenryKrinkle,
Very interesting what you write. You have dealt very intensively with the programs. To better understand what you have read, please answer the following questions.
How many different instruments are your observations based on?
Can you tune a piano by ear?
Best regards Burkhard
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Hello HenryKrinkle, I suggest trying 8:2 in the bass for more stretch than 6:3 gives you. Depending on the size of the piano, you can get good bass with TuneLab with 6:3 for spinets, 8:2 for consoles and studios and some small grands. I typically use 8:4 for professional uprights and 9:3 (P12) for the bass of grands in the 6 ft range on up. Of course there are no absolutes and results may vary depending on the scale of the piano and the quality of the inharmonicity measurements. I have a healthy respect and admiration for the modern ETD's available and their developers. Though I do sometimes make aural adjustments, TuneLab is my go to ETD for very good aural quality tunings.
Best regards, Brent Musgrave
Brent Musgrave Piano Tuner-Technician
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Hello HenryKrinkle,
Very interesting what you write. You have dealt very intensively with the programs. To better understand what you have read, please answer the following questions.
How many different instruments are your observations based on?
Can you tune a piano by ear?
Best regards Burkhard I'm not a professional tuner. I only tune (and regulate) my own piano, a grand Yamaha G5, thanks to this forum and various books as well as internet sources. I have a background similar to the author of Pianoscope, having majored in science/engineering but turned out to be a programmer. I understand the theoretical foundations of tuning the piano and the working principles of various ETAs. I can tune unisons by ear. I can hear beats of various aural checks, but I'm not good enough at aurally manipulating the hammer according to the beat changes, to the precision that an ETA can provide. So I have attempted, but never fully set the temperament by ear. So this doesn't give me a lot of credibility and you all can take anything I say with a huge grain of salt. Hello HenryKrinkle, I suggest trying 8:2 in the bass for more stretch than 6:3 gives you. Thank you for your suggestion. 8:2 is actually the first option that I tried, but the notes below A1 beats so offensively with the octave above that I switched to 6:3 instead. The solution found by Pianoscope is also closer to 6:3 which minimizes the beating better. Now I'm trying Tunic OnlyPure from the father of the P12 3:1 tuning method himself. Mr. Stopper is quite protective about how his program works. The UI is very clean, however the app doesn't give any customization options and no documentation at all. The full version only differs from the basic one by the automatic note detection function, but it doesn't work well at all for more than double the price. I ended up using the manual note change all the time. I was very confuzzled about how should I tune with this app. It doesn't premeasure inharmonicity like Tunelab or Pianoscope, so I assumed it measures it on the go like Verituner. However, it doesn't give any instruction about a tuning sequence. Google doesn't help much. One answer was just tune from A0, or start from any note, like other apps. But how can I start from A0 and end at A4 at exactly 440 Hz? If I first tune A4, then I decide to tune G#4, how can the app know the position of G#4 without having measured A3 or another anchor note? Another puzzling piece is, when I set A4 to exact 440 Hz by Tunelab, OnlyPure will report it as about 3 cent sharp. I thought it is a calibration issue, but OnlyPure doesn't have a calibration option. It turns out, the 440 Hz reported by OnlyPure isn't the frequency of the fundamental but some sort of calculated "OnlyPure Effective Pitch". Quoting Mr. Stopper: A deviation of 3.4 cents you encounter on A4 is of a correct magnitude for OEP (OnlyPure effective pitch) for a typical piano scale, so there is no error with your devices or your software. OEP functionality is essential for the ability that OnlyPure can deal with piano nonlinearity without the need of pre-measuring notes before the tuning process or OnlyPure's ability to tune pianos with different nonlinearity profiles nicely together by using the same OEP for both instruments. Now this is my speculation, and I'm fairly certain that I'm onto something. OnlyPure uses a whole different approach than any other app on the market. This is some information I've managed to collect from various posts in this forum and other sources: - OnlyPure doesn't premeasure inharmonicity but does it on the go.
- OnlyPure doesn't tune to precisely pure 3:1 but some kind of tempered 3:1
- OnlyPure requires an "effective pitch" in its algorithm that cannot be calibrated to the standard A440 at fundamental, or the algorithm won't work correctly.
- OnlyPure doesn't require any particular tuning sequence.
- OnlyPure can tune different pianos together at the same time.
- OnlyPure produces good results according to its users.
The logical conclusion is, OnlyPure stores an idealized fixed tuning curve and compare the measured Effective Pitch to it. The tuning curve probably is the Stopper temperament - dividing a P12 into 19 equal semitones rather than the standard octave into 12 semitones. The effective pitch is calculated from all the partials measured for each note by a proprietary algorithm. Due to inharmonicity, a note will sound sharper than its fundamental. I can imagine two pianos with A4 tune to 440 Hz at fundamental, but the one with higher inharmonicity will sound sharper than the other. OnlyPure averages the fundamental and the higher partials to some kind of perceived pitch and put it to the idealized tuning curve so different pianos with different inharmonicity can sound good together. OnlyPure doesn't care about lining up partials or minimizing beats at all. Because of this, it doesn't need to calculate the exact partial positions using FFT to a very high precision, which reduces calculation time and improves responsiveness. The philosophy does make a lot of sense and the result happens to be good, according to testimonies (I haven't finished the tuning yet). This is way different than any other app does, as far as I know. I will finish the tuning and assess the result later.
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Quick update. I have completed tuning my piano by OnlyPure. The sound characteristics are a lot similar to what Tunelab produced with 6:3 3:1 3:1 settings and overall I like it. While the tuning from Tunelab is exactly pure 3:1, the tuning from OnlyPure is definitely not. OnlyPure also struggles with the 6th and 7th octaves, albeit a bit better than Pianoscope. However, OnlyPure does a poor job at the very bottom 4 notes from A0 to C1. Probably because the phone mic doesn't response well to the lower frequencies of the fundamental of those notes, the app struggles so hard to produce a stable "effective pitch". I suspect it's the same with the highest octaves. I will try the apps again with an external mic and see if they perform better. To be fair, Pianoscope did produce a very good tuning, much much better than what I'd done before, and it is very easy to use. Probably because the 3:1 tuning by Tunelab left me such a big impression that now I'm a bit biased to it. To sum it up: - Pianoscope, balanced style: very clean sound. Fast and easy to use. Very good overall.
- Tunelab, pure 3:1: not so clean, but sounds better (personal preference). Archaic UI but does its job. Lacks the ability to adjust intervals by weights like Verituner.
- OnlyPure: not as clean as Pianoscope but cleaner than Tunelab pure 3:1. Sounds similar to Tunelab pure 3:1. Clean UI, easy to use but there's no help in the app. Almost zero tweaks or customizations except for adjusting the A4 pitch. The "pro" version costs a lot more than the basic, for a function that every other app does for free, but doesn't work very well.
Here are the offsets of the tunings produced by Pianoscope and OnlyPure compared to Tunelab 6:3 3:1 3:1 for my piano if anyone is interested in seeing the numbers:
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Here are the offsets of the tunings produced by Pianoscope and OnlyPure compared to Tunelab 6:3 3:1 3:1 for my piano if anyone is interested in seeing the numbers: Hello Henry, what style did you choose at Pianoscope? Pure12ths?
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Henry,
wow, thank you for your thorough review of pianoscope. It was a pleasure to read about your experience with different tuning apps. I would however like to learn more about the two issues you mentioned with pianscope:
1) Stability problems tuning the treble 2) Not getting good pure twelfths
Perhaps I can improve the app further. To analyse issue 1) it would be great if you could send me a recording of the treble notes which have the stability problem. The easiest way would be to start the app "Voice Memos", put the iPhone or iPad you are using in the location you use when tuning and then simply strike the keys like you do when tuning. You can then send the recording to support@pianscope.app for me to analyse.
To analyse issue 2) I would love to have a full audio recording of your instrument. This is easy to do with pianscope if you turn on the secret debug mode. This will only take three minutes of your time:
Create a new tuning document. In the inharmonicity view, tap ten times onto the message in the center. This will enable the secret debug menu. Now go to the debug menu and choose „Start Recording“. Now you can measure the inharmonicity like normally. If you have finished, got to the debug menu again and choose „Share Recording“ and also send the result to support@pianoscope.app
Thanks again for the great feedback and thank you for your help!
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Hello Henry, what style did you choose at Pianoscope? Pure12ths? I chose Balanced style. The reason I didn't choose the Pure12ths style is the Tunelab pure 3:1 tuning resulted in other intervals being tempered too much, so I wanted to choose something less aggressive. The Balanced style also gives the pure 12ths a large weight of 70%. I also wanted to see how good Pianoscope is out of the box. Henry,
2) Not getting good pure twelfths Well to be more accurate I don't think not getting good pure twelfths is the problem. If I wanted pure twelfths, I would've used Tunelab. I don't think Pianoscope is designed to produce pure 12ths, despite having given the interval a large weight. It also takes into account other intervals, so different constraints will lead to different solutions. The solution is not bad at all. It's just that I happen to like the other solution a bit more. I have sent the recordings as you requested.
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Suggestion:
Absolute purity of any interval in tuning is quite impossible. ALL are "tempered" to some degree whether we like it or not.
Peter Grey Piano Doctor
Last edited by P W Grey; 04/10/22 10:24 AM.
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HenryKrinkl, thanks for sending the files. I analysed your recordings of the treble notes and compared pianoscope's behaviour with them with Verituner and TuneLab. The differences I see are twofold:
1. Verituner and TuneLab have both linear tuning scales and therefore project the range from -1cents ... +1cents onto a far smaller screen region than pianoscope. Therefore the movement of the indicator feels stronger in pianoscope than in the other apps.
2. With the default settings, pianoscope does not use as strong a temporal averaging as Verituner and especially not as strong as TuneLab does. These apps average out most of the movements you are seeing. You can get nearly the same behaviour from pianoscope by changing the indicator responsiveness setting to "slow". TuneLab has such a slow update frequency that it misses most of the movement that is happening in fluctuating tones. If this is to be judged as a good or bad thing is up to the tuner. In pianoscope you can adjust it via a setting although even the "slow" setting in pianoscope is not as slow as the standard in TuneLab.
Last edited by Frank Illenberger; 04/11/22 03:31 PM.
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I used OnlyPure for a few months about three years ago. Mr Stopper let me use it when I gave a class for the PTA in the UK demonstrating the various ETDs. The app completely failed when tuning low inharmonicity pianos such as Blüthners. The treble was stretched so far as to be unbearable. However, it did give a pleasing sound for a piano with 'normal’ inharmonicity. Rick
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Frank, in the latest beta version, I found that some octaves in the bass have become too narrowed. This is the range where the lower sound is in 2 octave and the upper one is in 3 octave. By deleting the beta version and returning the old one, the octaves began to sound right.
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Happy Birthday Pianoscope
A year ago today, Pianoscope was released on the AppStore. I bought the Pro version on the same day. Pianoscope has been my companion in everyday work for 365 days. We have created around 450 piano tunings together so far.
I am still very satisfied with the app. And she's getting better and better...
Great app, great support and a nice fan base. Thank you very much Frank !!
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Thank you Burkhard Happy Birthday Pianoscope
A year ago today, Pianoscope was released on the AppStore. I bought the Pro version on the same day. Pianoscope has been my companion in everyday work for 365 days. We have created around 450 piano tunings together so far.
I am still very satisfied with the app. And she's getting better and better...
Great app, great support and a nice fan base. Thank you very much Frank !! Thank you, Burkhard! I also have enjoyed the last year very much. You people from the piano tuning community have all been very open and interested. I am looking forward to improving the app even further with your help.
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
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