[sdiy] Frequency Counter Software

[Amos]

I have taken absurd pains to tune a 3-VCO synth to utter unison, to the
point of manually phase-aligning the waves for minimum cancellation... only
to be told that the end result was too "cold" and "digital-sounding."

there seems to be a limit to the amount of "accuracy" some people want out
of a musical system!

Seb: thanks for the plugin recommendation.

On 10/10/05, Seb Francis <seb at burnit.co.uk> wrote:
>
> To answer my own question ...
>
> I've tried a few different frequency counter / spectrum analyser / scope
> softwares (hopefully 'softwares' is acceptable english ;)
> They all use FFT to get the frequency and don't seem to be very accurate
> - they jump around by a few hertz even with a stable input.
>
> But thinking along different lines, I found this great little VST plugin
> "C-Tuner"
> http://mitglied.lycos.de/moritz_48/Free-VST/cplugs11.ZIP
>
> In 'super-accurate' mode it measures to 0.1 cents.
>
> Testing with a soft-synth showed the expected 0.0 cent error
> Testing with my nord lead (digital) hardware synth showed a consistent
> error of +0.4 cent across the whole keyboard .. I can live with that :)
>
> Interestingly when I hooked up my MOTM VCOs, although they tracked well
> (within 5 cents across the whole keyboard - perhaps could be even better
> if I bothered fine tuning the trimmers a bit), both the 300 and 310
> showed a jitter of approx 2 cents. This is not my MIDI2CV converter by
> the way - the jitter is still present even with nothing plugged into the
> CV input.
>
> Now I'm not complaining: this is probably much better than most other
> VCOs (and actually one of the plus points of analog is the inaccuracy),
> but I make my point again about MIDI2CV converter accuracy - what
> benefit is there in having better than 1 cent accuracy if even a
> super-stable MOTM VCO is not this accurate.
>
> Anyway, now off to tune my newly built Oakley 3031 .. which was what
> started all this in the first place!
>
> Seb
>
>
>
>
> ryan williams wrote:
>
> > thats a good idea. I had been tuning VCOs by doing this:
> > run a soft-synth at some frequency. also output the MIDI value to your
> > MIDI->CV converter. mix that with the VCO and listen to beats to get
> > the offset correct. then go up 2 octaves and adjust the scaling,
> > repeat. Sure this is a common method, but it shouldn't be too hard to
> > make a frequency counter (did one with an 8bit uC once). A neat
> > program would be something that plays a reference frequency mixed with
> > the VCO output and displays the VCO frequency at the same time. I
> > think I'll write this program. It'll be atleast 2 weeks though.
> >
> > -ryan
> >
> > Seb Francis wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Can anyone point me in the direction of an accurate (and preferably
> >> free) frequency counter software for windows.
> >>
> >> It seems to me that this would be a very accurate and easy method of
> >> tuning VCOs (especially since my sound card is clocked from a dead
> >> stable RME A/D D/A interface).
> >>
> >> Seb
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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