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What tuner do you use in the studio

#61
It's 2015. Measuring an audio frequency against A=440hz is child's play technologically speaking. Most any device can do it accurately.

I use a free app on my android called PitchLab Lite. It's pretty damn cool IMO. It even has a spectrograph mode which I've found to be a fantastically useful tool for many many things. There's lots of other great apps out there for free as well. But if you need an excuse to spend some money on a dedicated box to do JUST tuning because you are a "professional" and you take this "Studio-work" seriously, then go right ahead.

I know that I only trust results from a TI-86 or better scientific graphing calculator for adding 2+2, so I totally get where you are coming from.
 
#67
In most studios these days, I tune to whatever VST they have in the DAW. Then everyone is spot on (though they will post-process w Melodyne or some tuner anyway to lock things in).

Anyway, I've been doing studio work for 40+ years. Bring a simple tuner with you. Ask them politely if they want you to tune in their system, to a keyboard, or to a 440 on your own tuner.

Studio work is all about efficiency. Have some confidence (or they wouldn't have asked you), make sure you are very easy to work with, be prepared, and get in and get out.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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#68
lowfreqgeek said:
Phone apps are fine if you don't need to tune in silence. Great for bedroom studios. Not so good for a room full of musicians costing several hundred dollars per hour.
Click to expand...

Any studio worth several hundred dollars per hour has plenty of quality tuning devices laying around at their disposal.
My point was not to tout the superiority of phone apps, but to express the triviality of the OP's perceived issue.

There's plenty of tuners available, you want a silent plug-in kind? That's fine. You don't need to have the best, most expensive kind for professional studio work. No one is going to be marveling at the quality of your tuner. Just tune your bass and be ready to focus on playing. It should take you no more than 10 to 15 seconds.
 
#70
At the amateur level, this is probably a storm in a teacup. There are usually bigger issues at stake than a few tenths of a cent variance on the electric bass.

The way I play, I'm sure a producer could find more to gripe about than the quality of my tuner!

Still, I find that I can get away with tuning less often when I use my Turbo Tuner, as opposed to my "high accuracy" Snark SN8, or a Boss TU-2. I think that would be valuable in the studio, where time is money.

The reason the TT's accuracy helps with perceived tuning stability is simple. The closer you're locked into the exact pitch centre, the further your instrument can drift before it becomes audibly out of tune.

IIRC, the TT is about 30 times more accurate than your garden-variety Boss tuner.

I agree that if you never do intonation work, then you probably don't need one for stage use. With the exception of the old Planet Waves pedal, I've never used a modern tuner that could still sound out of tune when it showed a lock.

Still, from my perspective, the cost difference between a Polytune and a Turbo Tuner is less than the cost of an hour of studio time. Why be the guy that causes a session to run longer, so they can apply pitch correction? This goes double if they are recording any tracks live off the floor, and your out-of-tune note bleeds into something else...

If you do have a TT available (or if you need a new tuner anyway), I don't know why you would go with a less accurate pedal or clip-on.
 
#73
My little experience in the studio involved doing a demo, and one guitarist being significantly out in tuning from me and the other guitarist.

Hence, due to time constraints we used the first guitarists tuner for everybody and so everyone was about 1/4 tone out on our demo.

Since discovered that their tuner switches had been bumped out of calibration, just needed a reset to 440.
 
#76
Any Tuner is NOT fine IMO.

My Korg Pitchblack is WAYYYY Out for studio work. For live gigs its wayyyyy out – that's how I found out it is off, because on a live gig I could hear it was out from two other people and I cross-checked it with my clip-on tuner. I used the clip-on for the rest of that gig. DB strings being tempermental to heat/humidity changes, tuning is required often when the aircon in the pub is blasting but patrons coming and going let in the heat & humidity yadda yadda...

The Pitchblack is now a paperweight. I tried the Peterson Strobos in the store, but didn't like it enough to get it. Planet Waves' tuner weighed as much as a tank, which is too much for a simple tuner and was not that great in the tuning department.

Tuning to the same tuner makes sense, especially if everyone uses a shoddy tuner.

Now I use a Turbo Tuner always on from the dedicated Tuner Out off my Pre-Amp DI, wish I'd had it when I recorded. Used a clip-on at the time.



If it's just for studio use and always on you could go for the non-stomper Turbo:

DSC_0151-200w.jpg



I'm not saying the Turbo is the be-end-all tuner. There are many options.
OP, Good luck finding the tuning solution that works for you.
 

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