Audio frequency counter app

[Old Rabbit]

If you have a android device here is a nice free app for reading audio frequencies.

Should work fine for tuning musical instruments like guitars, violins, pianos ect.

You can find one here. http://www.amazon.com/Keuwlsoft-Audio-Frequency-Counter/dp/B00QZJP5SM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428597286&sr=8-1&keywords=audio+frequency+counter

Can't beat the price. 

[9141702]

That looks pretty neat I wonder how many hardcore musicians can convert Hz to note letter in their head other than A440? Anyone who can properly tune an instrument from an FFT plot without having to consult a table of values is a better nerd/musician than I 

[Old Rabbit]

What do you bet that music supplyers sell apps or dedicated devices that show the note frequency
too. 

It would be easy to print out a conversion table, and with most instruments you can hold
wouldn't need more than a half dozen references for tuning. I imagine most musicians could
remember that many..

Of course a piano or harp would need several octaves worth.. A professional piano tuner usually
only has one octaves worth of tuning forks.

Several years ago I saw in a piano parts supply catalogue where they were selling a frequency counter
for the purpose of tuning a piano. It was quite large compared to a tablet.

[9141702]

Well, it just amused me... mainly because I spent a very boring work day trying to hash out a sample playback engine in discrete TTL logic on paper, having to mess around with programmable frequency dividers and lots of "if, then, else" in hardware.... it was a lot for my little brain to handle  Still, it goes to show that with enough latches, flip flops, counters and comparators, one can build just about anything.

I bet there's got to be at least one savant out there who can tune a piano with nothing but a spectrum analyzer 

[Old Rabbit]

No problem sir.. I understand about long work days..

I think in many cases when people get together to play music for fun
they usually just tune their instruments  so they are in tune with
each other. Even an individual may only check tuning between the
strings on a stringed instrument..

I didn't mean to sound condescending. In the beginng it just seemed
interesting that a person could get a app that would make  it wasy to
tune a musical instrument. Instead of having a tuning fork/s to keep up
with.

I guess it's just the nerd in me. 

On the logic circuit design. I hadn't thought about TTL for years. I built a digital clock
from scratch for my father in the late 1970's. He had been fussing that he couldn't find
a good digital clock with the day of the month on it. So I bread boarded one out, then built
it up with wirewrap.. Still works.  I built a few other things, but it was always fun building
things like that. I did get into some programing too, but just as a hobby..

[9141702]

As the group's keyboard player, I was used as the tuning gold-standard more than once One of my old synths used to have an "oscillator test" debug mode which just put out sine waves (though I can't remember which, there were a LOT of them over the years).

Funny you should mention the clock... this was my college final project >.>

http://i.imgur.com/oUyghFg.jpg

First PCB I ever did, too... now that was an adventure. Doesn't do days of the month though 

[Old Rabbit]

Nice layout on your clock.  Yes PCB's can be a challenge ..  I see you designed it with
a 24 hour format. I did that for my father too. Being in amateur radio he liked that
format.

I had push bottons for setting the days, hours, and minutes. I used 1 inch digital
read outs.  I built to show up to 31 days. So one had to reset the day when shorter
months came along.

My father knew how to build radios and amps with tubes, but felt he was to old to
learn how build the new fangled digital stuff..