Name a note from the microphone

The Live Tuner panel listens through your device's microphone, finds the pitch of one note or one feedback ring, and drives the same cents gauge the converter uses. It is a quick check for engineers, not a strobe tuner. To tune an instrument, use the tuner in BPM Forge: presets, drop tunings and a strobe view.

Start and stop

1. Scroll to Live Tuner and tap Start listening.
2. The browser asks for microphone permission the first time. Allow it.
3. The status under the gauge reads listening… and the button changes to Stop.
4. Play, sing or let the ring sound. The readout shows the nearest note, the detected frequency to one decimal, and the cents deviation in whole cents. Within ±5 cents the status says in tune; otherwise sharp or flat, and the needle moves accordingly.
5. Tap Stop when you are done. The microphone is released and the readout clears.

The reading follows the A4 reference at the top, so a 442 Hz ensemble reads against 442 Hz.

What it listens for

• One note at a time, about 30 Hz to 3 kHz. It uses the same pitch detector as BPM Forge's tuner (the McLeod method). Anything higher, such as a feedback ring at 5 kHz, shows above range. Noise shows no clear pitch, and very quiet input shows listening…. A chord can give a misleading reading, so let one note sound.
• Steady reading. The reading is smoothed over a few frames so a steady note holds still. When the sound stops, the last reading fades and clears after about 1.5 seconds.
• Raw input. Echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain are switched off on the microphone stream so the pitch is not processed before it is measured. Some phones apply their own processing anyway.
• No monitoring. The microphone is analysed only, never routed to the speakers, so it cannot feed back — and nothing is recorded or uploaded.

How accurate it is

On clean test tones the reading lands on the right note within a cent from a 5-string bass's low B (31 Hz) up to A6 (1760 Hz), and names notes up to about 3 kHz. A real microphone in a real room is less tidy:

• Low notes need a close microphone. Phone and laptop microphones weaken everything below about 80 Hz. Hold the phone close to the cabinet or the drum, or use an interface.
• Low notes take a moment. A bass note needs a few cycles before it can be measured; give it a quarter of a second.
• Rings are loud and steady, which is the easy case. Readings for a ring above 3 kHz show above range — use the Hz you read from your analyser in the converter instead.

Note history — ringing out

Each note the tuner settles on is added to the history with its frequency. While you ring out a wedge, push the gain until it rings, read the note, pull the fader shown in the The engineer's view and carry on: the history is your list of what you have pulled.

Stage view and the screen

The stage view shows the note and the cents in big digits, readable from across the stage. While the tuner listens, PitchSense asks the browser to keep the screen awake, so the phone does not lock mid-check (where the browser supports it).

When it stops by itself

The tuner releases the microphone whenever the tab is hidden — switching apps or moving to another tab — so the recording indicator does not stay on in the background. When you come back, tap Start listening again.

Messages you may see