[sdiy] Frequency Counter Software

[Grant Richter]

The human ear is evolutionarily adapted to the human voice, which is  
extremely unstable.
The possibility of "nimble" pitch sources with extreme stability are  
only recently available (perhaps 100 years).
At this point, they do not have any real significance in terms of the  
"History of Music".

Buchla's famous comment (attributed) that his VCOs didn't have to be  
tuned any more often than a violin,
is perfectly reasonable in the context of musical instrument history.

Absolute experts (such as Mr. Ian Fritz) have researched analog  
oscillator stability to the point where
it rivals DSPs. A very difficult and impressive engineering success.  
But only an engineering success.

Ultra-stable oscillators, by themselves, have not produced a musical  
revolution, because even highly
unstable acoustic sources are "good enough for jazz".

And yes, Mr. Loffink, I do know that precise oscillators allow micro- 
tuning and the good things that go with it.
So do Gamelan Metalophones and Sitars / Tamburas.

On Oct 10, 2005, at 9:37 PM, Amos wrote:

> 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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