[sdiy] Stobe tuner Hardware

[Don Tillman]

   > From: WeAreAs1 at aol.com
   > Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 00:47:49 EDT
   >
   > No, go just a little further to:
   > 
   > http://www.PetersonTuners.com/products/modelvsam/index.cfm
   > 
   > ...and you'll see the hardware strobe tuner that's really
   > software!  (the Peterson Virtual Strobe)
   > 
   > A buddy of mine, who is a brilliant luthier and an incredibly
   > talented guitar tech, uses one of these in his shop these days.
   > He loves it.

I have one of these also.  I like it a lot.  

Strobe tuners are the best for tuning acoustic and electric
instruments, where the harmonics are not exact multiples of the
fundamental and the waveform changes over time.  

Regular digital tuners, like the Korg units, perform badly for, say,
tuning a piano, as they can practically only get within about 5 cents,
while a strobe tuner is an order of magnitude more accurate.  5 cents
is just not good enough for any sort of serious work.  The difference
comes from interpreting the strobe pattern with your eyes, which are
of course really good at detecting moving patterns, compared to some
algorithm attempting to sense the frequency difference and display the
offset as a simple number like "+5".

The best is a proper non-virtual hardware strobe, like this:
  http://www.petersontuners.com/products/modelsc/index.cfm

But that's incredily expensive, like $3000.00 or so.

The Peterson VSAM virtual strobe is a remarkable little unit that
gives you a very good tuner for the price.

Regular digital tuners are fine for calibrating oscillators with pure
waveforms.  And they're so inexpensive it's not unreasonable to build
one into a VCO.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California
don at till.com
http://www.till.com