.

I am still using their hardware... just can't quite bring myself to spend that much on a software tuner! Peterson tuners, hardware software, as as good as it gets. They are very accurate and reliable. The stretched/sweetened tunings are a lot of fun to play with, but keep in mind you will almost certainly need to tweak them for your particular instruments!

What is the basis of the 'Sweetened' tunings?

Does it move the pythagorean comma dependent on the octave you are playing in?

Or something like that?

A lot of the schemes I've seen around the internet a claimed to be sent from the heavens yet make neither harmonic or mathematical sense.  Anything that makes harmonic sense simply doesn't work on a fretted instrument as it needs to be even tempered. (the known inaccuracy averaged through the scale)

Sure you can sweeten some frequency relations but at the expense of making the majority of chords worse than they already are from a harmonic perspective.

The expectation bias introduced from being exposed several centuries worth of chromatically tuned instruments also makes it very difficult to asess the harmonic value of a truly sweetened harmonic series.  The 7th harmonic for example has all but been eradicated from most forms of western music because it don't sound pretty enough, even to the point where the piano's hammer hits is design to eliminated as much 7th harmonic resonance as possible.  If we ever could hear a truly 'sweetened' tuning it would likely sound horrible to most of us.

I limit my experimentation on this stuff to microtonal keyboards and listening to exponents of classical microtonal instruments such as the voice and viol based strings mostly.  Those guys are really using their ears!

There have been many experts in this field since and including Pythagoras and nobody seems to have come up with anything conclusive yet.  I'm figuring from that it is a pretty tricky subject defining a truly sweetened tuning and an impossibility on a previously fretted instrument.

The only thing that makes any sense at all within our current system is to change A=440 to.....think of a number.

I once gave a tuning demo to some coworkers. I played examples of equal, just, and larips tunings. One person could hear the difference, and that person preferred equal tuning.
 
IMO with music that uses intervals smaller than fourths, the effect of 'sweetened' tunings (which haven't really been defined here, but I'll take it to mean tunings that try to get harmonics of simultaneous notes closer together) is jarring. And thus they become their own form of dissonance.
 
That could be exactly what you want. But it seems to be the polar opposite of the usually stated intention.
 

 I've had the Peterson Strobosoft tuner for several years.  Compared to the other software tuners I have like the ones included in GR4 or Amplatube, or even any hardware , stomp box type,  it is much more sensitive then any I have tried. I don't really understand that strobing graphic thingy that much but the +/- scale is much more sensitive. Hands down, the best tuner I've ever had.
 
 Sweetened tunings? Never heard of them. Is there an advantage over standard A 440 ?

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ohgrant


 I've had the Peterson Strobosoft tuner for several years.  Compared to the other software tuners I have like the ones included in GR4 or Amplatube, or even any hardware , stomp box type,  it is much more sensitive then any I have tried. I don't really understand that strobing graphic thingy that much but the +/- scale is much more sensitive. Hands down, the best tuner I've ever had.
 
 Sweetened tunings? Never heard of them. Is there an advantage over standard A 440 ?

A "sweetened" tuning is one that is different from The "equal temperament" intonation such as used on piano and guitar. In that tuning all half steps are equal. The  equal temperament tuning also differs from the natural harmonic relationship between notes in scales. To hear a good example of a "sweetened" tuning (also known as Just Temperament in this case), listen to a good solo violinist, or other stringed instrument with no frets. Not that those are the only instruments that can play in other than equal temperament intonation, but they are good examples.

Let's say a keyboard player wanted to play with a violinist, and wanted to use the exact notes the violinist did. He/she would have to "sweeten" his/her tuning to do that. Not that it would be 100% successful since the tuning would have to match the key they were playing in and a note in one chord might not be the same frequency as the same note in a different chord.

Me, I'm happy with equal temperament tuning.

I just looked at the detail on the tuner and it's certainly useful over a wide range of instruments and tuning schemes.

The sweetner aspect kind of turned me off as being a bit of a marketing novelty when the concept of the thing is plenty good enough to sell the product anyway.

Use it to get the intonation bang on and everything tuned nicely that should be enough without using a sweetener to put it all slightly out of tune again.

I played with a guitarist like that he couldn't ever accept he was out of tune, the keys, horn section, bass and everything else must have been 'wrong' because he had 'perfect pitch'...  I can see this thing encouraging jokers like that especially when they can back it up with faux 'evidence'.

I see no reason in this day and age why one tuner would be any more accurate than another.  I can see however attention to the sensitivity of the input signal, the elimination of unwanted noise, the feature set given you have a bunch of diverse and different instruments to tune and how it all responds to workman like use can lead to favouring one product over another.

Chappel

ohgrant


I've had the Peterson Strobosoft tuner for several years.  Compared to the other software tuners I have like the ones included in GR4 or Amplatube, or even any hardware , stomp box type,  it is much more sensitive then any I have tried. I don't really understand that strobing graphic thingy that much but the +/- scale is much more sensitive. Hands down, the best tuner I've ever had.

Sweetened tunings? Never heard of them. Is there an advantage over standard A 440 ?

A "sweetened" tuning is one that is different from The "equal temperament" intonation such as used on piano and guitar. In that tuning all half steps are equal. The  equal temperament tuning also differs from the natural harmonic relationship between notes in scales. To hear a good example of a "sweetened" tuning (also known as Just Temperament in this case), listen to a good solo violinist, or other stringed instrument with no frets. Not that those are the only instruments that can play in other than equal temperament intonation, but they are good examples.

Let's say a keyboard player wanted to play with a violinist, and wanted to use the exact notes the violinist did. He/she would have to "sweeten" his/her tuning to do that. Not that it would be 100% successful since the tuning would have to match the key they were playing in and a note in one chord might not be the same frequency as the same note in a different chord.

Me, I'm happy with equal temperament tuning.

 
Thanks for that, yea I enjoy the sound of all fretless instruments I've ever heard. I've often wondered how they can be so precise. If I understand correctly, "sweetened" tuning is used out of necessity then? Only experience I've had with playing with someone that was playing fretless was when my last keyboard player had a gut bass and we did "Stray cay Strut" there was some tuning issues and I finally gave up and tuned to him for that. I thought at the time his strings were just old, his intonation off, or he was just not that precise. I guess that was a situation where "sweetened" tuning would have helped. Still came out OK when we finally got in tune. Was a real pain though. 
 
 I plan to avoid situations like that, but curious if there is an absolute quantifiable "sweetened" tuning or a case of fine tuning until it just sounds right?
 

I've been using Strobo for several years now and it's a both a top notch tuner AND an interesting source of alternate tunings and tuning "sweeteners".  Highly recommended.