#Digital piano tuner generator

We might have opted for a rotary encoder and a display or even some LEDs to make a cheap alternative. The final design calls for a 24-position rotary switch which is tough to find. It is interesting that the final design isn’t the first one attempted and there is an explanation of why the first design wasn’t successful. If we learned any of that in childhood piano classes, we’ve forgotten it.įor those whose quest for precision isn’t that critical, note that the difference between two notes can be as little as 0.3316 Hz. If you know about the chromatic scale, the equal temperament system, and how many cents are in an octave, you might want to skip the first section. The post has a lot of detail about how piano tuning works.

You tune the string to the corresponding note. Instead, it generates a precise frequency and couples it to the piano using a transducer. Oddly enough, the device doesn’t have a display.

#Digital piano tuner generator

decided to build something better and cheaper using a 32-bit Arduino and a DDS frequency generator chip on a breakout board. So you can spend $800 for precision or $60 for something less. A cheap tuner unit might be accurate to 1.5 cents which sounds good until you look at one for ten times the price and find it is accurate to 0.1 cents.

Knows that tuning musical instruments is all about precision and that precision is measured in a logarithmic unit called a cent.