Proper tuning for psychoacoustics (positive effect on brain)

[Pcode]

The proper way to tune is A= 432Hz is that true?

I have been doing some research on tuning and to me 432Hz sounds better then 440Hz or 444Hz how about you guys?

This is the math behind this...
http://youtu.be/VS3tureL0UQ

440Hz vs. 432Hz (sound comparison)
http://youtu.be/P5ILuyaZIO4

[Bald Eagle]

The proper way to tune A really depends on your definition of proper. The general standard is 440. But many tune to 432 and some 442-445.

The standard has changed over time and will likely continue to change. Read the wiki about Pitch Inflation.

Just listening to the second link I prefer the 440 tuning. It sounds brighter to me and that is just my preference. I'll have to think about this some more now that it has tweaked my interest. So it's off to google to sort through the conspiracy theories, the sonic pureness of 432 vs the speed of light and so on.

[Stipes Vigilo]

Interesting. I grew up under a 440 standard and perhaps our upbringing has something to do with it. They use to tell me 440 was the American standard, 438 & 442 were Japanese & European (but I don't remember who used which). Dealing with some Drum Corps' a few years back, I remember the standard had changed to 442. So it depends on relevance to tuning rather than preference in cycles. Most importantly for them (and I would have to say for most band and orchestra also) is that the pit mallet instruments are generally factory set to that standard of 442 now, so all instruments in a standard scaling would be best to match that. Most people can't tell the difference until two instruments play in unison and hit that 'magic detune point' beyond a simple phasing. Trying to make a decision of which is better without relevance to the whole can be nothing more than subjective and academic.

When someone tells me they have 'perfect pitch' I often ask them to which standard do they make that claim by. I trust a musician with 'relative pitch' more. (Which most can be trained to have.)

[Stipes Vigilo]

Oh, and the only time I remember piano tuners using a 432 standard was just to keep from having to restring an entire piano where the strings had aged and the soundboard hadn't been properly maintained. Hence the phrase, "it's relatively in tune".

[Don Audio Labs]

The standard has changed over time and will likely continue to change. Read the wiki about Pitch Inflation.

Thanks for that link. That's an article i otherwise wouldn't have found on wikipedia.

So it's off to google to sort through the conspiracy theories, the sonic pureness of 432 vs the speed of light and so on.

Please be so kind and share any reasonable findings with us.

One the one hand this is quite interesting but on the other hand all that esoteric stuff i came across after a quick google search kinda turned me off.

So yeah, if anyone finds a neutrally written analysis about this i would really like to read it myself.

[SanderXpander]

If we are talking about digital synths most likely the "regular" 440 will produce the highest fidelity, simply because almost certainly that is the tuning they used when making the samples.
Not that there will be a very big difference, but since we're already nitpicking...

[Stipes Vigilo]

If we are talking about digital synths most likely the "regular" 440 will produce the highest fidelity, simply because almost certainly that is the tuning they used when making the samples.
Not that there will be a very big difference, but since we're already nitpicking...

Is it? As I stated before, the greater number in band/orchestral communities are using 442 because of the factory standards in making fixed melodic percusion instruments. Many of the samples I use are microtonal and don't use that standard even as a starting point, much less throughout its own scaling. But what I hear in 'psychoacoustics' has more to do with overtone re-alignment, especially when applied toward effect degradation. Similar to the old BBE sonic maximizers in re-aligning the overtones to the fundamentals but creating a better source to less aliasing and keeping it throughout the chain of processing. So I really don't see it as being a subjective thing of what the cycle standard should be, but the purity of what it is from start to finish.

And even then, it's still subjective.

[Bald Eagle]

Google really is a treasure trove of useless information. Here is some of what I found...

Verdi's music was composed and originally played at A432, and that the original Stradivarius violins were designed to be tuned to A432.

432 squared is 186,624, which comes close to Einstein's figure for the speed of light - 186,282 miles per second.

If you plot the Pythagorean tuning for the C-Major scale on a 360 degree wheel, the wheel is based on 16 divisions, and if you set middle C as 256Hz (A432 tuning), you get 16 sections of 16Hz in the wheel.

When the hertz frequencies for the C-Major scale are calculated the cycles per second works out to whole numbers with A432 and NOT with A440. Seems to make sense that this tuning would "feel better" to the human ear.

Code: Select all

Modern Standard Tuning (A = 440 hz, C = 261.63 hz)

Octave Below    Middle C        Octave Above 
Note Frequency  Note Frequency  Note Frequency     
C    130.81     C    261.63     C    523.25 
D    146.83     D    293.66     D    587.33 
E    164.81     E    329.63     E    659.26 
F    174.61     F    349.23     F    698.46 
G    196        G    392        G    783.99 
A    220        A    440        A    880.00 
B    246.94     B    493.88     B    987.77 

Stradivari/Verdi Tuning (A = 432 hz, C = 256 hz)

Octave Below    Middle C        Octave Above 
Note Frequency  Note Frequency  Note Frequency       
C    128        C    256        C    512
D    144        D    288        D    576
E    162        E    324        E    648
F    176        F    352        F    704
G    192        G    384        G    768
A    216        A    432        A    864
B    243        B    486        B    972

Water Sound images of 432 Hz and 440 Hz
http://wonderinspirit.wordpress.com/201 ... nd-440-hz/

Now as far as the math goes I don't buy into all of that. Cycles per second is based on the length of a second which is an arbitrary division of a minute made thousands of years ago. It is not based on some astronomical timing or cycle in nature. The minute could have been divided into 100 parts or 25 parts and all that math goes out the window.

So for now I am just going to play some tunes and hope all of this doesn't keep me up at night

[Stipes Vigilo]

Right off the top of my head, I would have to say that mathmatical calculations of sound would be more accurate when applied to the speed of sound rather than the speed of light. And there are fundamental problems that occur when trying to reconcile relativity in quantum terms. And as speed of sound also is relative to sea level, air pressure, etc., all testing would have to have those variables listed also, so any standard is arbitrary and only worthy within the context of those varibles and to the whole of the interactive environment that it incorporates and thereby inextricably incorporates it.

Practical applications of processing seem more relative than source to me.

[MarPabl]

I don't think it will be easy to identify a difference of 8 Hz for the tuning

And I agree the math regarding whole numbers are somewhat useless... except if that could be used to avoid floating point approximations and instead use whole numbers (ease for calculation)... but I don't think the whole number approximation will be valid for the whole note range.