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About 20 years ago I bought my first digital guitar tuner, a Korg, that is about the size of a deck of cards. It had a monochrome LCD screen that mimicked an an

• rglullis 5y ago
  F-droid shows at least a dozen different apps, none of them with ads. Even if the open source apps were not a perfect fit for your case, you could have taken 10% of the money you spent and made everyone's life better.
  • titzer 5y ago
    Clip-on tuners are just far superior. They use a piezo and are driven by vibration, which works in a noisy environment, like a stage. I probably would not have bought one if that crappy phone app had not pissed me off so much. Thanks crappy phone app!
    • rglullis 5y ago
      I am not arguing that the analog/hardware version of a product is superior. I am arguing that, provided: - you were satisfied with the software version of a solution; - what drove you away from it was the ads, You could have solved the ad issue by looking at OSS alternatives, to which you had plenty to choose from. Saying that the HW version is better, when a (good version) SW was enough, smells of post-fact rationalization.
      • collaborative 5y ago
        Users are understandably angry with ads. I have different points of views because I am at the same time (a) a user, (b) a marketer and (c) an ad platform These is how each point of view is unable to be reconciled: a) ads are annoying. But I will watch ads rather than pay a subscription any day of the week. I however will agree to a one time IAP because it doesn't litter my bank account history. People shouldn't be expected to keep an eye on more recurring payments than absolutely necessary unless they have a personal assistant. It's irresponsible to make them responsible for this b) ads are great because of their ability to appear in searches made by customers who are looking for exactly what I am selling. Or rather, ads were great. Giants offloading billions on absurd ad spends made ad placement unaffordable to many sustainable businesses. Also, ads don't really work that well since Apple flipped the switch off on tracking. It would be great if ads worked and weren't abused by the extremely well-funded because they are a fantastic sales channel for medium and small sized businesses. But in their current form they are a scam or a marketing channel for the big monopolies (Amazon, etc) c) ads aren't worth the money Google or anyone pay you for showing them on your app/website. I suspect apps keep trying to monetize via ads because they all want to be a "giant", and actually charging for content keeps you small and unattractive to capital So my conclusion is that the only viable method of monetization is one-time IAPs or up-front software purchases and the only sustainable software project is one that aims to remain small. Everything else is smoke created by excessive capital that makes everyone's life more miserable.
  • djaychela 5y ago
    For me, no app would take the place of a clip on tuner. I play bass, and mostly (pandemic aside) live. Dedicated hardware is the way to go, and with this I can even tune mid-song if needed.
  • nyanpasu64 5y ago
    I haven't tried F-Droid tuners, but F-Droid's metronomes were an utter disappointment. Though I haven't tried developing and uploading a better one myself, so...
• stephen_g 5y ago
  Yeah, the Snark is good, I usually use that with my acoustic guitars. I also use a Polytune 3 which is the first thing in my signal chain for electric or bass. I've never had good results with tuning apps on my phone. Usually because of background noise - which is where the Snark shines, working through vibration!
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    Second on the Snark because it uses vibrations. It'll tune an unplugged electric guitar.
    • vr46 5y ago
      I found that my Snarks kept getting eaten by the dog so downvotes for making a dog-friendly tuner. I now have a strobe clip-on tuner that does ‘sweetened’ tuning and that aside, it’s much easier to read and apparently does not taste good to the dog.
  • Gravityloss 5y ago
    I used to have the tuner pedal early in the chain, but recently I've found it more useful as last pedal. That way I can troubleshoot my signal chain without the amp being on / audience hearing noises. Might not work for everyone.
  • Joeboy 5y ago
    I like my Snark, but I'm a bit troubled by the instructions saying not to leave it on any instrument with a polyurethane finish, which I think is most guitars. Not sure how much I should worry about that.
    • ratww 5y ago
      Funny, I have a similar tuner that is permanently attached to both poly and (significantly more fragile) nitro guitars, and never saw anything of the sort happen. Also I thought poly was virtually indestructible, those guitars never age... If you want something permanent, I can recommend a D'addario. They can attach to the tuner screw and won't be in conctact with the wood.
• anitil 5y ago
  As a non-guitarist but one-time musician, why are guitar tuners needed? Other stringed instruments seem to not need them, and I never thought to ask. (Obviously you might need an absolute reference if you don't have absolute pitch)
  • epse 5y ago
    All string instruments need regular tuning, but with things like violin, more emphasis is put during lessons on being able to tune your instrument fully off of hearing a single reference pitch
    • omnicognate 5y ago
      Perhaps because it's a necessary orchestral skill. They play an A and everybody tunes their instruments to it, producing that awesome wash of sound you get before a concert. For the violin you tune the A string and tune the others by hearing the open fifths between them. For a guitar it's easier because you have frets, so you can play the fretted note on one string that should have the same pitch as the next (open) string up, then you just need to compare two pitches that should be equal, rather than hear an interval. (I'm not a guitarist so I don't know if that's considered a good technique.) Perhaps it's just not considered such an important skill in the small groups people typically play the guitar in.
      • BeniBoy 5y ago
        It's usually not a good idea to tune a guitar as you described. Basically a guitar has to use "temperate tuning" because it has frets, so you can't be absolutely in tune everywhere, but you can minimize the error on each position. So if you tune string by string relying on fretting the last string, you will "carry" the error, and the resulting tuning will be wrong. It is good for a first pass, but you then want to check that some specific positions do sound good. Depending on what you are playing (for example if you rely more on some open chord position), you might even want to tune the open string to make those position sound especially good (at the expense of some less common one). That is commonly referred to as "sweetened tuning". EDIT: I might have confused things indeed. If you fret, you should not carry the error. Usually, an practical way to tune two string is to play harmonics and listen to the "beats" between them. That will carry the error. Fretting should work, but in practice does not really because that suppose that your intonation is perfect (ie the fret are perfectly placed), which they usually are not, especially on acoustics with no easy way to set it up.
• sriram_malhar 5y ago
  You are dissing a product that you didn't pay money for, and comparing it unfavorably to one that you did. How is that fair. There are metronome and tuner apps that are way more pleasant and functional than any hardware product, if you could shell out just a few bucks (< $10). You also have fewer batteries to manage.
  • matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > How is that fair. They chose not to charge money for it. They chose to ruin it with annoying ads nobody wants to see. It is absolutely fair.
    • sriram_malhar 5y ago
      OP is dissing one app, but making a generalised comment on all software apps in the tuner/metronome category. There is no shortage of well done apps that cost very little (most of them cheaper than the cheapest korg tuner) and packing in way more functionality. If OP's comment was something to the tune (heh) of "I tried a bunch of paid top-rated apps and I prefer my hardware tuner", I'd consider it a fair comparison.
      • Kaibeezy 5y ago
        I read it as dissing all free/crap/adware. Which is like dissing TV adverts or billboards or, I dunno, stickers on racing cars. So, cough up for Netflix, or move to an area where people have expended effort to make sure billboards are not permitted, or, I dunno, go watch the ponies. It’s all out there, just got to pay one of the prices. If you don’t want ads, you pay, or pick up one of dozens of perfectly serviceable used hardware tuners on eBay for 5 quid all day long.
        • amelius 5y ago
          I'm ok with ads. I just don't want to see them everywhere I look. And no, "just" move to another place is not a proper argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo
• jamespetercook 5y ago
  One of the best purchases I ever made was about 8 years ago when I bought the Polytune iOS app for less than £5. It does one thing really well, has never tried to take more of my attention than it should with upgrades or ads, and every time I get a new phone it comes with me.
• dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  Sorry if this is well off topic, but what is the word you've censored in your penultimate paragraph? > g**mn ad platforms I can't for the life of me figure it out. At first I thought you meant "gaming" because of pointless "gamificiation" (no, I don't want to collect a gem and get virtual rewards for "streaks" every time I tune my guitar to encourage me to engage with your app every day) but that doesn't quite fit, nor does "Google"
  • pgrulich 5y ago
    I think its goddamn ;)
    • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Maybe it's gee gosh golly darmn?
    • dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      Ah well I feel a bit daft now, not sure how that didn't cross my mind
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I can't understand why people self-censor them; I mean you didn't figure out goddamn, but it's insulting to believe people can't parse what f*k or s*t refers to. Swearing is allowed on here, you won't get banned. And we're all adults here, we won't be shocked or offended by bad language. Alternatively, don't swear at all, there's plenty of other ways to express yourself. But don't do this shitty middle-ground bleeping things out bit, we're not stupid.
    • dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      My favourite kind of useless censorship is things like "st*pid cunt"
      • bityard 5y ago
        It's the mark of a progressive Australian!
• opan 5y ago
  If you stick to apps from F-Droid you can avoid this in my experience. I don't think any apps I have contain ads. Not sure if F-Droid actually bans them, or if it's the quality that comes with being free (as in freedom) software.
• mumblemumble 5y ago
  To add to that, I suppose I'm far from an expert, but I'd suggest that it's worthwhile for any musician to learn how to use a tuning fork. Maybe not to start with, and those Snark tuners certainly are indispensable if you need to tune your instrument in a noisy environment. And perhaps I'm just showing my age here. (We didn't have digital tuners when I was a kid, or at least I could never afford one.) But I would guess that learning how to tune your instrument the analog way is a useful step in developing your musical ear.