Bug: Not sticking to the right note/string.

[CalvinWest]

When I'm tuning the guitar, it "sticks" to the wrong string and centers there. Sometimes I just try to keep tuning by eyeballing it anyway, and it eventually latches onto the right one.

The bug wasn't present a while ago.

[thetwom]

Thanks for the report. Sound very annoying. Do you know with which version the issue started to occur?

Maybe you could provide a sound sample, which demonstrates the issue. You can use thetuner app to record samples and store it to a wave file (please read especially point 4 carefully to understand that the sound BEFORE pressing is stored, not AFTER):

1. Go to preferences and scroll down. You will find the option of recording duration in scientific mode. Turn this up to maximum.
2. Switch on scientific mode.
3. Go back to the tuner, you will now see a record button at the bottom.
4. Pluck you string and wait for the phenomena to happen. After it happened, let it sound for e.g. 1 more second, then press the record button. It will save the 5 seconds BEFORE pressing the button.
5. Give a filename and store it somewhere.
6. Better listen to the stored file before sharing to make sure, it is really something you want to share.
7. Provide the file here (maybe you have to zip it before ...

[CalvinWest]

Sorry for the slow response, but I wanted to be more certain. It seems like enabling the scientific mode prevents the issue from being reproduced.

At first it made no sense, but now I think it's because the note was always being detected correctly. And I should have been clearer about this in my original post, the line that tracks the note was always accurate. It's just that the window was not being centered on that line (or the nearest string to it).

Since that's mainly a visual issue, I think enabling the scientific mode may have helped helped due to something to do with the size of the window. But that's just me speculating.

[thetwom]

Thanks for reply. So do you mean, that this line which represents the current pitch in the pitch history jumps up and down, but is not staying close to the detected "target note"?

Is it, that it does not happen in scientific mode, since the target note is not restricted to e.g. specific guitar strings? So, when in the "non-scientific" mode, using as instrument "chromatic" would behave just as well (I guess yes).

In the end the important questions would be:

• Is the frequency correctly detected?
• Is the correct note assigned to the currently detected frequency?
• Is the visualization behaving in a meaningful way?

There might of course other issues like scientific mode and non-scientific mode behaving differently (of course to some extent, there is a difference, since scientific mode always assumes a chromatic instrument, but besides of that there should no difference).

What would be helpful to improve it:

• If the frequency is not correctly detected, a sound sample is always helpful. But of course, if it is not happening in scientific mode it is difficult to provide a good sample which demonstrates the issue.
• If the note is not correctly assigned or the visualization is not behaving well, maybe you could provide a short screen cast? Describing in words can so quickly lead to misunderstandings :-).

[CalvinWest]

Hey, sorry for the slowest response, I was busy with a gig, but hopefully this will help.

First, to answer the questions:

• Yes, he frequency is being correctly detected.
• Yes, the correct note is being assigned to the detected frequency.
• No, the visualization is "centering" on the incorrect note, not the detected one.

To demonstrate this, I have recorded a video of my screen. Note that the video has no sound, because when I tried recording it with sound, the mic was disabled in app. However, I can tell you that during this entire recording, I am repeatedly playing the "D" string on my guitar, in my quiet studio. As you can see, the frequency and the note "D" are being correctly detected, but the visualization stays centered on "E". About halfway through the video, I go to settings and turn on scientific mode. As you can see, that helps with the issue (which is why I suspect it was a window size or layout issue).

Hope that helps!

[thetwom]

Hi, thanks a lot for the video. No worries about the slow response, it takes a bit of pressure from me when things take some time :-).

So, here's the thing:

• The tuner detects D4.
• In the "instrument" mode you choose "guitar". But a guitar has no D4 string, but just a D3 string.
• The tuner always looks for the closest string and chooses this as target note, which apparently is E4.
• The tuner centres on the target note, so E4.

Why does scientific mode look better?

• Scientific mode has no instruments, but it always assumes a chromatic scale.
• So all notes are valid targets, including D4.
• So the tuner chooses D4 as target and centres on it.

You could also select instrument mode, and switch to "chromatic" as instrument and you would see the same behaviour.

Unfortunately, this does not necessarily solve your problem. From your initial description, you said that some previous version worked better, also you obviously choose guitar as instrument. So I assume you are trying to tune a guitar (or at least an instrument with the same tuning as a guitar). If this is so, possibly the tuner is detecting the wrong octave. So could it be, that you are playing the D3-string (the D string of a standard guitar), and the tuner detects an octave higher (D4)? In this case the tuner indeed would detect the wrong tone, and a sound sample from the scientific mode as initially described would help.

Best regard and thanks again for the video.

[CalvinWest]

I had not considered the octave. I think your diagnosis is correct; the wrong octave is being detected. I can confirm that I'm playing the D string on a standard tuning guitar. Now my hunch says there's some weird acoustic thing happening in my studio. I'll disable the scientific mode and start tuning my guitar in different rooms in the coming days...

[thetwom]

Detecting the correct octave can sometimes indeed be a bit difficult. It can help plucking the string more at the centre.

In case you find some time, it would still helpful to get a sound sample when the wrong octave is being detected.