why is it the only true strobe? and what is a strobe? sorry for all the questions lol. i've seen some youtube videos, lots of flashing lights in the sonic tuner. i think it is easier to tune with the mode1 of the korg but not knowing the strobe concept might be the reason for this. is the instrument tuned when the lights are frozen?
i have another question, can i plug the bass directly into the amplifier and then use the line out of the amplifier to this tuner? does it work that way?
Why is it the only true strobe? I don't know... because they are the only company that chose to engineer their product that way?
Here's how an old-school strobe tuner worked. There was a translucent disk with a pattern printed on it. The disk spun at a particular speed for the note you were trying to tune. Your audio signal was fed in the sound illuminated an extremely rapidly blinking (it'd blink in time with the peaks in the sound wave) "strobe" light that shone behind the disk. The interference pattern between the blinking light and the pattern printed on the spinning disk would light up a pattern on the wheel that you'd see stationary if you were perfectly in tune, or turning one way or another depending on if you were sharp or flat and faster or slower depending on how out you were.
Completely analog. Undeniably accurate, assuming the wheel was spinning at the right pace for the note you were tuning. If that pattern was stopped completely you were perfectly in tune. Period. No plus or minus fudge factor.
These are the tuners you see professional touring techs and instrument builders and tuning gurus using, and for a reason. They are extremely accurate and easy to read. There's no flickering or ambiguity back and forth about whether it is sharp or flat. It is completely immediate to respond to changes in frequency, so you can see very clearly if your pitch is changing, and quickly. But they are big and heavy and expensive.
The turbo tuner works a little differently because there is no spinning wheel, but I suspect it does something like rotate digitally around the ring of LEDs and only light them if there is an audio peak that coincides with when a particular LED is supposed to be on. It's not as good as the old spinning disk, but it is a true stroboscopic effect and it works very well.
The peterson virtual strobe simulates the stroboscopic effect. As I understand it, it generates a digital reference pitch and then uses the input audio signal to create an interference pattern with the reference signal, measures that, and then displays a fake pattern on the LCD screen that looks something like what you'd get from the old spinning disk technology, problem is it isn't a real stroboscopic effect, it's a bogus pattern they show you on the screen that represents what's happening from the real stroboscopic effect happening in a DSP chip -- so it's not quite as immediate as a real strobe. You aren't seeing the actual interference pattern, you're seeing a representation of that pattern. It works very well, and it's a great product, but it's not a real strobe. My chief complaint is that it's very touchy. It likes for you to play very softly, turn down all your treble when you tune, mute all the other strings extremely carefully, and then it still likes to flicker between different notes and back and forth between sharp and flat when in fact this is not what's happening in real life.
By the way, peterson is the last remaining manufacturer of the old school spinning disk gear, too -- so they DO know what they are doing and are a great company.
The LED or LCD tuners like the pitchblack and to some extent the needle tuners work a little differently. They take some period of time, like 1 second or half a second (they're all different, some are adjustable) and count the number of peaks in the audio input signal. It then compares this number against the number of peaks it should see in a perfectly tuned note and lights up a light depending on how close or far away you are. There are a couple of problems with this -- first, some engineer had to decide how close was close enough to light up the green or whatever. They can't make it exact or you'd never hit it -- it'd be green one second and then glitch back and forth between sharp and flat. So they decide that there is a +/- range of cycles that's close enough to be considered in-tune. The other problem with this is that since it uses an average, it doesn't take into account fluctuations in pitch well. This is why some of these tuners are much easier to use if you play the note, observe if it is sharp or flat, mute the note, adjust your tuning machine, then play the note again to see where they are. They just don't deal well with pitches that are changing.
Now, the pitchblack is an excellent one of these tuners. It works well and they've got it dialed in well for guitar and bass so that most of the disadvantages are gone, and it's a neat little package that fits well on a pedalboard and is easy to read, but it's still not a strobe tuner so you don't get that immediate and real look...
Also, yes, you should be able to take any pedal tuner and plug it into a line-out or tuner out on a head or preamp. You won't get the muting functionality this way, though.
