source file: m1446.txt Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 07:34:37 EDT Subject: A pitch for making synthesizers tunable to an accuracy of at least 0.1 cent From: I've worked in the area of computer music synthesis for a number of years and have had the experience of being somewhat limited in the tuning accuracy which I could achieve. I believe that the difference between being able to set a pitch to within plus or minus 1 cent and being able to set that pitch to within plus or minus 0.1 cent could in some cases spell the difference between achieving a really powerful musical effect - a striking clarity of harmony, for example, and being "just on the edge" of achieving that effect but being unable to fully take advantage of it. In fact, I suspect that many musicians would find themselves frequently frustrated by a limitation in tuning accuracy to plus or minus 1 cent, and actually prevented from being able to fully realize in actual music the real potential in their musical ideas. There is a paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 24 No. 6 published in November 1952 by J. Donald Harris entitled: "Pitch Discrimination". He tested three subjects with great numbers of repetitions and found that for sine tones at 2000 Hz the minimum frequency changes for which the subjects, with extensive practice, could distinguish between a step up in frequency and a step down in frequency were 2.4 cents for subject 1, 1.7 cents for subject 2, and 1.3 cents for subject 3. For sine tones at 1000 Hz and 500 Hz, the sensitivity was lower. These are results for pure sine tones. For musical timbres and especially when notes are playing together and there may be beating effects which a musician would want to control accurately in order to produce the best possible sound, it would stand to reason that changing note frequencies by very small amounts - well under one cent - could in some cases greatly affect the effect created by the combination of musical tones sounding together. Dave Hill La Mesa, CA ------------------------------ End of TUNING Digest 1446 *************************