Korg tuner calibration

[AndyW83]

I will give it a shot boys thank you

 

[Hello?]

You are welcome. Make sure to let us know how it goes.

 

[Hello?]

As long as the tuning pitch is achievable and agreed on, it really doesn't matter what it is.

This is probably the best advice to take from this thread. As long as everyone in the band uses the same standard, ie the same tuner, regardless if its A=440Hz or A=442Hz or A=439.3846738Hz the band will be in tune with each other and the audience won't notice or care. Example: this is from memory so if am wrong I would appreciate a correction, Van Halen and Pantera have used A=432Hz.

 

[DigitalMan]

This is probably the best advice to take from this thread. As long as everyone in the band uses the same standard, ie the same tuner, regardless if its A=440Hz or A=442Hz or A=439.3846738Hz the band will be in tune with each other and the audience won't notice or care. Example: this is from memory so if am wrong I would appreciate a correction, Van Halen and Pantera have used A=432Hz.

Can't say I agree. Sharing a tuner creates logistical challenges. Deviating from 440 makes learning new material by ear an exercise in re-tuning more often than any other tuning basis (assuming contemporary music and not a Van Halen/Pantera cover band I suppose.)

So for me, tuners should be true to whatever they're set at - if not they're defective and should be returned. A far bigger issue for me for bass in particular is tracking. Some tuners are great, and others outright suck. Having said that, a deviation of several tenths of a cent probably won't be detectable as note pitch is transient anyway and subject to minor imperfections due to push/pull bend of the fretted string, and geometry imparted by string height or action.

 

[Hello?]

Can't say I agree. Sharing a tuner creates logistical challenges. Deviating from 440 makes learning new material by ear an exercise in re-tuning more often than any other tuning basis (assuming contemporary music and not a Van Halen/Pantera cover band I suppose.)

So for me, tuners should be true to whatever they're set at - if not they're defective and should be returned. A far bigger issue for me for bass in particular is tracking. Some tuners are great, and others outright suck. Having said that, a deviation of several tenths of a cent probably won't be detectable as note pitch is transient anyway and subject to minor imperfections due to push/pull bend of the fretted string, and geometry imparted by string height or action.

Sharing a tuner is not hard if everyone shows up to rehearsal. And yes, major deviations from standard A can be problematic (the pantera/halen reference was just an example of extreme deviation, I think a quarter step, just to illustrate the fact that a band in tune with itself will not irk the audience - hindsight I would not have included that piece).

But minor deviations happen all the time with readily available digital tuners (as stated by another poster, electronics do not stay stable forever and calibration is needed periodically if possible) and not every musician has true perfect pitch, relative pitch maybe, but not perfect, and again - I am talking about minor deviations so learning by ear from a studio recording should not cause an absolute breakdown in note recognition.

As far as tuner tracking - the Turbo Tuner ... that is all.

ETA: I originally wrote "relative pitch yes" but meant and changed it to "relative pitch maybe" - in my second paragraph.

 

[DigitalMan]

Sharing a tuner is not hard if everyone shows up to rehearsal. And yes, major deviations from standard A can be problematic (the pantera/halen reference was just an example of extreme deviation, I think a quarter step, just to illustrate the fact that a band in tune with itself will not irk the audience - hindsight I would not have included that piece).

But minor deviations happen all the time with readily available digital tuners (as stated by another poster, electronics do not stay stable forever and calibration is needed periodically if possible) and not every musician has true perfect pitch, relative pitch maybe, but not perfect, and again - I am talking about minor deviations so learning by ear from a studio recording should not cause an absolute breakdown in note recognition.

As far as tuner tracking - the Turbo Tuner ... that is all.

ETA: I originally wrote "relative pitch yes" but meant and changed it to "relative pitch maybe" - in my second paragraph.

I don't disagree overly much - but will point out that a quarter cent is far less than a quarter step.

It would be really interesting if a lot of folks would run the tuning test and report back. I have no data to back this up, but suspect that calibration for quality tuners is a non issue.

Most digital communication equipment must be accurate in timing with accuracy many orders of magnitude more precise than a simple 440 times per second - yet things like wifi transmitters and fiber optic interfaces are commodity priced and don't have crystals to tune or other artifacts.

Tracking, instrument hardware, and technique are my favored suspects.

 

[Real Soon]

Not an ideal thing to have to drop $ on, but I bet Korg will service and calibrate it. If it's several years old, bad calibration could be the result of a circuitry issue.

Or for that matter, a software bug. Do their site's support pages or forums have any discussion on it?


As for why one would use any tunings besides 440, it's not common but can happen. If the tuner is usable for acoustic instruments via mic input...a Renaissance-style viol quartet would still need one that could tune to 415Hz. And a historic English brass band might need 452Hz. Those are extreme examples, but also, if you have an instrument that's difficult to re-tune in the group, such as a piano that's gone a little sharp in hot weather, tweakable tuning frequency is invaluable for quick-reference adjustment w/o stopping the concert to re-tune to the piano.

 

[Michael Pearce]

Then let me ask one last question for my own knowledge... Why would anyone want to set it to anything but 440?!

My mother has a piano that is well over a hundred years old, made before concert pitch was standardized at 440 Hz. The last guy who tuned it explained that it shouldn't be tuned to 440 (the increased tension of a couple hundred strings would warp the frame). So it is tuned to 437 Hz. If I want to play in tune along with it, I have to tune to 437 Hz.

 

[khutch]

A cent is one twelve-hundredth of an octave. Some of the A settings mentioned above are:

415 Hz = -101 cents
432 Hz = -32 cents
438 Hz = -8 cents
445 Hz = +19.5 cents
452 Hz = +46.5 cents

A half step is 100 cents and a quarter step is 50 cents so A = 432 Hz is close to a quarter step low and A = 452 Hz is almost exactly a quarter step high. Of course 415 Hz is what we call a half step low! Wouldn't it be easier to just transpose your music for that??

You are not going to find quartz or ceramic frequency references specified in cents. But one cent is a frequency difference of 578 parts per million (ppm) and you will find frequency references rated in ppm. For example, run of the mill quartz crystals can have a frequency error of 50 ppm from the factory, a drift over temperature of 150 ppm and an aging rate of 5 ppm/year. The temperature drift is not important if you play and tune near room temperature, as most of us do, most of the time. So with 10 years of aging a crystal should be within 100 ppm or a fifth of a cent. It is not likely a quartz crystal based tuner will really need to have its frequency reference recalibrated, ever. At only a slight premium in cost quartz crystals significantly better than this can be obtained. Therefore, setting the A frequency standard that you want to use should be the only calibration your tuner would ever need.

One can only hope that none of our tuners use ceramic resonators for frequency references. They can have initial errors of 5000 ppm or around 10 cents. I don't even see aging specs on the ones I looked at but they can drift 3 to 6 cents over temperature. So it is not likely anyone uses them in instrument tuners, at least I hope no one does!