A microphone’s ability to reliably identify a frequency is excellent, even if the microphone is cheap, crappy and uncalibrated. It’s almost entirely a function

A microphone’s ability to reliably identify a frequency is excellent, even if the microphone is cheap, crappy and uncalibrated. It’s almost entirely a function of whatever clock is used to digitize it, and oscillator chips that are just fine are ubiquitous. The issue is calibrating the amplitude response at a given frequency, and a tuning fork won’t help. edit: those quartz oscillator chips have a lot in common with tuning forks.