Thread: Anybody know of a decent tuner/sound frequency meter?

I 'm in search of a piece of hardware that'll indicate the frequency of any sound it detects. I don't want something that tells you how many cents a sound is in or out of tune to a specific pitch, just a machine that'll say a sound is x.xx Hz. A software program would do but ideally a robust and portable tool/box would best suit my needs. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You're asking for a chromatic meter.

There are plenty of digital chromatic meters on the market.

E.g.

I paid about £10 for my Korg model. It is truly chromatic and converts the frequencies to the appropriate tone or semi-tone, and is precise enough for quarter-tone experts who can read the frequencies. You can set it to the frequency reading mode, or for musical scale notation. If it is on the latter, it will give you an idea of how precise you are playing e.g. if you can 'bend' notes, then you can bend a tone to a quarter tone or a semi-tone and it will read it out to you. It does everything the more expensive ones does, only cheaper and just as reliable. Get one that runs on two AAA tiny batteries, rather than those fiddly silver oxide ones which drain too quickly.

The one above is a bit more pricey. If you're really stuck, I can try and dig mine out and let you know what model it is.

Originally Posted by Head_case

You're asking for a chromatic meter.

There are plenty of digital chromatic meters on the market.

E.g.

Thanks for the speedy reply. However, I've already got a few chromatic tuners, which are perfectly suited for tuning my guitars and basses and what-not, but I'm after something that doesn't use the chromatic scale as reference and doesn't measure in cents. Mine read from -50 to +50 cents either side of the note, but it's a bit of guesswork if I want to tune to 'non-standard' pitches. Unless that one you've got is a bit better than mine.

I could use my ears and listen to the beats, which is good ear training, but it means extra mathematics in working out how many beats per second to listen for and then the awkwardness and inaccuracy of timing it with a metronome. Plus certain sounds produce beats which are more easily audible than others etc leading to more problems.

I see what you mean.

Although mine doesn't measure in percent -

check the Korg website: http://korg.co.uk/products/tuners/index.asp?tyO=on

They do non-chromatic ones as well.

Maybe the word 'tuner' was a bad description. I'm looking for something like a sound level meter but instead of measuring loudness, I need to measure pitch.

Instead of a machine that measures the sound frequency, I could use something that emits a constant tone, like an electronic tuning fork or pitch pipe, and then tune to that until no beats are heard.

One of my chromatic tuners does have a pitch pipe but it goes up in semitones in equal temperament. If there was something like this that had the feature whereby the user could specify the tone emitted in Hz, it'd be perfect. I could use a DAW to generate the tone, but that would mean using my computer, when what I want is something a bit more portable.

Originally Posted by Argus

I 'm in search of a piece of hardware that'll indicate the frequency of any sound it detects. I don't want something that tells you how many cents a sound is in or out of tune to a specific pitch, just a machine that'll say a sound is x.xx Hz. A software program would do but ideally a robust and portable tool/box would best suit my needs. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I too, am looking for a low cost audio frequency meter, not a tuner.
I want to experiment with Pythagorean tuning on a stringed instrument I'm planning to build, and that tuning is somewhat different from equal temperament tuning. I need a readout of whatever frequency my string is making, not how far from center it is.

I too am looking for a hardware tuner that measures in both hertz and cents but in the meantime before I get one I just found and downloaded two apps that might work for you - n-Track Tuner, and Tuner T1... look forward to trying them out.

Sounds like what he needed was a frequency counter (which radio guys use to tune radio waves, but is silent) and a frequency generator, which emits audible tones for testing speakers, hi-fis, etc.

The "cents" measurement of frequency is logarithmic; it divides each octave into 100 cents, regardless if it's A=110, 220, 440, 880, etc. It's for musical purposes. The only digital tuner I know of that has +/- 2 cents resolution was certain old KORG models, which later went to 4 cents.