<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">The human ear is evolutionarily adapted to the human voice, which is extremely unstable.<DIV>The possibility of "nimble" pitch sources with extreme stability are only recently available (perhaps 100 years).</DIV><DIV>At this point, they do not have any real significance in terms of the "History of Music".</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Buchla's famous comment (attributed) that his VCOs didn't have to be tuned any more often than a violin,</DIV><DIV>is perfectly reasonable in the context of musical instrument history.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Absolute experts (such as Mr. Ian Fritz) have researched analog oscillator stability to the point where</DIV><DIV>it rivals DSPs. A very difficult and impressive engineering success. But only an engineering success.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Ultra-stable oscillators, by themselves, have not produced a musical revolution, because even highly</DIV><DIV>unstable acoustic sources are "good enough for jazz".</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>And yes, Mr. Loffink, I do know that precise oscillators allow micro-tuning and the good things that go with it.</DIV><DIV>So do Gamelan Metalophones and Sitars / Tamburas.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV>On Oct 10, 2005, at 9:37 PM, Amos wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">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."<BR> <BR> there seems to be a limit to the amount of "accuracy" some people want out of a musical system!<BR> <BR> Seb: thanks for the plugin recommendation.<BR><BR><DIV><SPAN class="gmail_quote">On 10/10/05, <B class="gmail_sendername">Seb Francis</B> <<A href="mailto:seb@burnit.co.uk">seb@burnit.co.uk</A>> wrote:</SPAN><BLOCKQUOTE class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> To answer my own question ...<BR><BR>I've tried a few different frequency counter / spectrum analyser / scope<BR>softwares (hopefully 'softwares' is acceptable english ;)<BR>They all use FFT to get the frequency and don't seem to be very accurate <BR>- they jump around by a few hertz even with a stable input.<BR><BR>But thinking along different lines, I found this great little VST plugin<BR>"C-Tuner"<BR><A href="http://mitglied.lycos.de/moritz_48/Free-VST/cplugs11.ZIP"> http://mitglied.lycos.de/moritz_48/Free-VST/cplugs11.ZIP</A><BR><BR>In 'super-accurate' mode it measures to 0.1 cents.<BR><BR>Testing with a soft-synth showed the expected 0.0 cent error<BR>Testing with my nord lead (digital) hardware synth showed a consistent <BR>error of +0.4 cent across the whole keyboard .. I can live with that :)<BR><BR>Interestingly when I hooked up my MOTM VCOs, although they tracked well<BR>(within 5 cents across the whole keyboard - perhaps could be even better <BR>if I bothered fine tuning the trimmers a bit), both the 300 and 310<BR>showed a jitter of approx 2 cents. This is not my MIDI2CV converter by<BR>the way - the jitter is still present even with nothing plugged into the <BR>CV input.<BR><BR>Now I'm not complaining: this is probably much better than most other<BR>VCOs (and actually one of the plus points of analog is the inaccuracy),<BR>but I make my point again about MIDI2CV converter accuracy - what <BR>benefit is there in having better than 1 cent accuracy if even a<BR>super-stable MOTM VCO is not this accurate.<BR><BR>Anyway, now off to tune my newly built Oakley 3031 .. which was what<BR>started all this in the first place! <BR><BR>Seb<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>ryan williams wrote:<BR><BR>> thats a good idea. I had been tuning VCOs by doing this:<BR>> run a soft-synth at some frequency. also output the MIDI value to your<BR>> MIDI->CV converter. mix that with the VCO and listen to beats to get <BR>> the offset correct. then go up 2 octaves and adjust the scaling,<BR>> repeat. Sure this is a common method, but it shouldn't be too hard to<BR>> make a frequency counter (did one with an 8bit uC once). A neat <BR>> program would be something that plays a reference frequency mixed with<BR>> the VCO output and displays the VCO frequency at the same time. I<BR>> think I'll write this program. It'll be atleast 2 weeks though. <BR>><BR>> -ryan<BR>><BR>> Seb Francis wrote:<BR>><BR>>> Hi,<BR>>><BR>>> Can anyone point me in the direction of an accurate (and preferably<BR>>> free) frequency counter software for windows. <BR>>><BR>>> It seems to me that this would be a very accurate and easy method of<BR>>> tuning VCOs (especially since my sound card is clocked from a dead<BR>>> stable RME A/D D/A interface).<BR>>> <BR>>> Seb<BR>><BR>><BR>><BR>><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>