Variations on the Snail-Analyser and its spectral estimates for the accurate tuning of musical sounds: a strobe tuner like display

Thomas Hélie (1) , Charles Picasso (1) , Robert Piéchaud (1) , Michael Jousserand (2) , Tom Colinot (2)

1 S3AM - Systèmes et Signaux Sonores : Audio/Acoustique, instruMents
2 Buffet Group

The Snail-Analyser software combines a highprecision method of spectral analysis with a visual rendering that is musically consistent. In this paper, we consider the visual rendering of a tuning device used by the musical community, the strobe-tuner, and propose to make it benefit from the analysis process of the Snail-Analyser. The graphical user interface is composed of a classical set of 12 dials (one per chroma) made of rotating wheels with concentric periodic patterns (one per octave), the immobility of which expresses the exact tuning of the targeted notes. But instead of using the audio signal to strobe the wheel patterns, the process extracts the demodulated phase related to each targeted note. Each phase is converted into a wheel angle, so that the concentric (but not interlocked) rotating patterns provide independent tuning indicators. Beyond the accuracy, an interest of this technology is to select the frequencies of the targeted notes in a modular way, according to musical choices (temperaments, modes, but also octave stretching, etc.).

Mots clés: signal processing; spectral analysis; demodulated phase; strobe tuner

Domaines: Vibrations [physics.class-ph]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Thomas Hélie, Charles Picasso, Robert Piéchaud, Michael Jousserand, Tom Colinot. Variations on the Snail-Analyser and its spectral estimates for the accurate tuning of musical sounds: a strobe tuner like display. 31st International Electrotechnical and Computer Science Conference ERK 2022, Sep 2022, Portoroz, Slovenia. ⟨hal-03782993⟩