Product Launch
anonymous
53 points
45 comments
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
Show HN: Veena Chromatic Tuner
play.google.commusic technologyinstrument tuningmobile app development
Discussion (45 comments)
Showing 45 comments
This is an interesting project. It isn’t immediately obvious to me how the visualisations aid the tuning process. Please can you say a little more about how you expect a user to interpret those as they perform tuning work?
Pitch is an estimate based on sampled audio. Sometimes, it is not always accurately detected. Here, we have an additional visual cue that produces a stable/stationary waveform when the detected pitch is in tune with the selected reference note. A plucked tone has a slight variation in pitch from start to end; it rises and falls slightly. You can see this in the visual display. This would be very useful for fretting work, where each fret's tone is expected to have similar pitch variation.
I see. Was there an example of that in the video? Perhaps I missed it.
In what way does the visualisation vary when the note is not in tune? How does the visualisation indicate flat or sharp?
4 months ago
No. When sharp even by 0.5Hz the waveform rotates right and left when flat.
Perhaps it lets you get that last 1-1/4 of a hz that might otherwise get lost?
Its also probably really good for beginners trying on their own to train them selves so they can spot when they are over/under tune
You can't tune an instrument to 1/4 of a hz. Temperature, humidity, mechanic impacts all constantly keep working on the instrument, changing it's tune. Instruments are not high precision tools.
Whatever features this app has, they're just visual fancy with no value.
If the weather is stable, my violin drifts less than 1/4 of a Hz over the course of a week, let alone a single playing session.
Wow, impressive stability. In case of violin (bowed instrument), the waveform stability is visualised very well. Closer to sine wave. I tend to see less harmonics than plucked lutes like South Indian Veena. Please select 2 or 4 waveform periods in settings, set the desired reference note and try.
Thanks. I've been looking for a new app to give me immediate feedback on my pitch accuracy while I play, because the violin has no frets and my ear isn't good enough yet to identify whether I'm a little sharp or flat on each note. I think realtime feedback could really help me train my fingers.
I'll post more detailed feedback in a day or two when I've had time to experiment. Hopefully you'll still be checking the thread.
4 months ago
Post your detailed feedback when you have time or e-mail us. Will be checking the thread. If there is even a slight variation of pitch w.r.t reference note the visual feedback will rotate. But, the feedback would give an idea about the deviation.
4 months ago
There are also tuning apps that draw the cent deviation as a line, I think the T1 tuner is one such app, you can see a line graph moving and vibrating as you play your note. A similar app to veena is the airyware tuner that shows the soundwave graph moving left or right.
4 months ago
> me immediate feedback on my pitch accuracy while I play
The visual feedback needs manual reference note settings. That is the only limitation.
Some of us use chromatic tuners to fast (lazy) check our CNC speeds and feeds. 1/4Hz matters to me, go Korg!
4 months ago
CNC machines ? Chromatic mode should definitely be useful. The visual feedback requires an accurate reference frequency. You may play with A4 value or ratios to get desired non musical frequency value.
4 months ago
> You can't tune an instrument to 1/4 of a hz
I mean you can, but for stringed instruments keeping it to an absolute is hard. its the relative that you care about, at least for an instrument with a static fret. pretty much everything other non-keyboard instrument is down to you to adjust on the fly.
when you are within 1hz you get a beat at roughly 1hz, which is normally fairly easy to pickup.
Its part of the reason why brass instruments are never "wide" in stereo on recordings, because they tend to phase like a mother fucker. (there are ways around it)
It's just easier to quickly notice a pattern moving or standing still than the needle moving by a few degrees. The needle can also appear twitchy or jump around and lag, making it harder to tune accurately.
Pitch detection is computed and can sometimes be influenced by external noise or sampling limitations.It can jump. However, the visual display is based on the period of the reference note (or set frequency), allowing it to function independently of the detected pitch.
This is a great answer. If I understood correctly: The feedback you give the user is different than a usual tuner in two ways: it is framed by the reference note, and is two-dimensional.
4 months ago
Yes. The pitch displayed and needle interface is based on measured frequency. It also shows the nearest note name based on this measured value. The visual waveform interface's stability is based on reference frequency set. There is still scope for improvements to detect the pitch variation of plucked strings and provide an analysis. The tuner supports Just intonation which are based on ratios. Here fundamental, fifth and octave have perfect ratios (1, 3/2, and 2) and they can be visualized. Kindly try if you have an Android mobile. There is also a play button to sound the reference note.
I guess this is a similar idea to the Peterson Strobe tuner? I think they have a rotating object which presents dark and light regions at the chosen frequency, which is a similar idea to building a visualisation on a set of samples whose length is the period of the chosen frequency.
4 months ago
Same basic idea, like an untriggered oscilloscope tuned to a fixed frequency/period.
A tuner with ads. There's plenty of ad-free tuners, thank you.
Thanks for the feedback! Ads help us keep the app free and support ongoing development.
Then charge for it. Ads are definitely not okay when you're trying to tune your instrument. The real reason of course is that ads will make more money than a one time payment.
Also, the OP smells like vapid AI slop.
4 months ago
We will be introducing an ad-free premium version once we finalize the implementation details. We also wish to clarify that English is not our native language.
The visual feedback sounds very much like the strobe feature on my guitar tuner. I think the first like this was the Stroboconn in the 1930s.
Peterson is the most known for their strobe tuners I believe. There are nowadays many other desktop and smartphone apps and pedals that have a strobe mode, but some are real strobes and some are only simulated. As far as I can tell, a real strobe will recreate the effect based on comparing the input signal frequency to a generated reference. A fake one will just use the estimated frequency (done by a pitch detection algorithm usually based on FFT) but instead of a needle offset or LED meter it will show a steady moving pattern, but it's not as responsive or as reliable as the real thing.
The visual feedback uses time period (of ref note) and number of cycles to set the scale of waveform display. It doesn't depend on detected pitch.
I think strobe tuner's used neat analog electronics based reference and filters to visualise.
A few years ago I made a small tuner that mimicked the strobe effect by resampling the signal with interpolation to match the wave period (similar to an untriggered oscilloscope) and applying an IIR bandpass filter to get a clean sinewave, then showing the sinewave as a color gradient instead of an oscilloscope view. I tried a few different variations but couldn't figure out how to control the speed (sensitivity) of the movement and make it independent of the input frequency/period (apart from showing more or fewer periods in the pattern) and also it required a strong biquad filter to remove harmonics that would bleed into the strobe pattern (a similar effect can be seen in the turbo tuner (*) guitar pedal that uses LEDs to show a spinning pattern and sometimes the pattern smears or flickers), but this introduced unwanted lag. Here is a screen recording of my old app: https://youtu.be/IjYv1fDEopY
(*) I'm not affiliated in any way, I was just researching this a lot.
4 months ago
Interesting. It took time for us to get the waveform stability working. We also have a smoothed wave overlay on top of raw signal. This is more a filtered version of input signal. Tried adding more filtering to get the sine wave output. But, it was too much CPU intensive. We also tried adding few overlays to this stable waveform. They did not work well and hence removed them. I agree, there is no good way to make the speed independent of input frequency. The plucked note pitch variation in flat bridge instruments like South Indian Veena is too wide when compared to pointed bridge instruments. We are planning to add additional cue that shows if a note is in tune based on pitch variation midpoint. This might help tuning the string or setting the frets relatively accurate.
4 months ago
This visual feedback is very similar. It also shows octave changes i.e if the pitch detected is 0.5x, 1x or 2x the reference freq / note set.
Any plan for an iOS version?
Most musicians use Apple platforms, so focusing only on Android could be limiting.
4 months ago
Maybe you're correct about windows vs macos, but I find it hard to believe that the current distribution of android vs iphone users in the world is much different for musicians.
4 months ago
An iOS version is definitely in our plans.
We intend to launch it once this app has gained sufficient traction.
4 months ago
This was true for decades but isn't really a thing now. Many studios and home daw set-ups are windows now.
Apple used to have the best audio subsystem but they've really dropped the ball.
Agreed that iOS is probably a good idea, but no longer crucial.
- Instruments list should have more instruments
- Would appreciate other temperaments: Pythagorean-C temperament, perfect 5th, etc. See the gstrings app for example.
- Base note selection only provides tone and sharp options (C, C#, D, D#...) but as you know, outside of equal temperament, C# and Db (and so on) are different pitches.
Thanks for your valuable feedback. Instrument list and temperament profiles would be expanded before adding other new features. The project started as a tuner app for South Indian Veena & as a fretting aid (based on ratios).
On base notes, have you tried using Just Intonation and other tuning profiles. They use perfect 5th. I will take a look at C# and Db difference in other temperaments. Maybe, our nomenclature needs a re-look.
4 months ago
Sorry, I don't only mean C# and Db, but just in general - the flat and sharp won't be the same outside of equal temperament. (I'm guessing details like that might matter to trombone players but I'm not sure; I play a C instrument myself).
I've only taken a cursory look and haven't tried playing violin with your app yet, but I'll post more feedback when I do!
Sounds interesting... Is there a youtube demo? Or a web-version of this for those who want to check it out? Maybe an iOS version?
Thanks
4 months ago
There is a short video here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gZbP7svgBUM (not comprehensive. uses simulated sine wave and app generated tones). There is no web or iOS version.
4 months ago
To wrap up, Thanks, HN community. Your feedback, comments, suggestions, and technical discussions have been truly humbling. We're delighted to offer a complimentary premium version of the app to anyone who contributed to this thread, once it's released. Just email us when it's available.
4 months ago
So “Show HN” is now for straight-up advertisements of commercial products?
This ad copy is in the smarmy style of the worst corporate slop.