A=440 was Tuning

[David Boyce]

I should have said more carefully what my finding was.

I calibrated Tunelab at home using the A440 tone from the website I 
mentioned. (Checked also with my A440 tuning fork).  I then COMPARED the 
reading from the 440Hz website tone on my PC at home, to that on several 
other computers and found I got a stationary display on the others.

This could of course mean that all the soundcards I encountered were off by 
exactly the same amount!

I don't have any other source than my tuning fork and website tones for an 
accurate A440.  (I found the US telephone tone tricky to use and was unsure 
of its transatlantic accuracy - and the vagaries of telphone handsets could 
be greater than of soundcards).

At some point I'm sure I could find someone with the right equipment in the 
large community college where I work, to produce a 440Hz tone of known 
accuracy. Or maybe not!  It kind of brings us back full cuircle to the 
original post, and the undependability of peoples ideas (and tuning forks) 
of A440!

Best regards,

David.


"There is no magic way to get a tone that is more precise than the quartz 
crystal in your sound card. I have a sound card that has a known offset from 
its calibration in sound generating mode in TuneLab. When I go to that 
website and play A400, I get a tone that is off by exactly the amount 
indicated by the TuneLab calibration. So if you get exactly A440, then you 
aare just lucky that your soundcard was not very far off.

Robert Scott
Ypsilanti, Michigan"