Strobe tuners are a whole lot easier to read.
Well, partly the reason why strobe tuners are so accurate is because of how they work. The strobing is analog, even on units like the Peterson Strobostomp HD, it’s just represented on a digital display.
It the unit strobes at the frequency of the note it’s set to (A440 for example) and the note played into it strobes at its frequency (440.25 for example) that .25 cent difference is the strobe that is seen on screen. It’s so accurate because it’s instant, analog and physics based.
Now adding a strobe mode on a unit like the QC would look nice but it won’t be any more accurate than the built in stream tuner, as it will need to go through the A/D conversion and analyzing the note played against the reference pitch. Sorry for the nerdy reply, I just really like my Peterson tuner lol.
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That makes sense! I guess I just like the digital representation then - I feel that I can find tune better while watching the strobe.
So maybe the tuner isn’t more accurate, but my reading of it is?
Ya. People bitched about Helix tuner for the first couple years. One guy even did this hugely inaccurate video and called it a lab test. It was laughable. So all line 6 did was make three different display options in their tuner. One is a strobe like display. Suddenly I everything is more accurate according to everyone when in reality nothing changed. It was fine before if you didn’t pick every tenth of a second. I do agree with you that from the pictures I have seen they could have either multiple display options or a prettier display. One think I like on the Helix is there is a setting in the tuner that lets you set one of the send lines and dedicate it to a tuner. I think they did it initially for people that had the rack unit and rack tuners but I actually use it and have my Peterson Strobo Plus. I use It for intonation or if I want a sweetened tuning.
Here’s a fun test we can try (I’ll do it after I receive my QC from Sweetwater): tune using the QC’s tuner, then check your tuning against your Strobo Stomp, Turbo Tuner, or whatever strobe tuner you have. How close did you get using the QC’s tuner?
Tested against the Stark tuner. The results are the same. The rise and fall rate are slightly different, but straight up tune on the Stark is bubble center on the QC.
I don’t think accuracy was in question. I know one thing I will miss from the helix is the real large strobe like display. It’s super easy to see. I am sure QC is also but I think this was more about the display.
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I also like strobes because sometimes I’m slightly off stage or behind a speaker talking to people. It’s much easier for me to see the strobe tuner screen than the small dot in the center to tune with. I also just tune much faster watching the whole screen react, especially if I end up in a situation where I’m singing and tuning at the same time.
I agree that the strobe tuners or emulations of them are much easier to read. In regards to accuracy, I tested the QC against the following units and the results of all units were basically the same. Turbo Tuner, Helix, AxeFx III, Peterson iStrobo software in my iPhone (I have all the options in it), T.C. Electronics Polytune clip on, Peterson strobe tuner clip on (first version.) One thing that I love about the Peterson software and the tuner in the Axe is that it gives you an actual measurement of what frequency your note is. I would love to see this incorporated into the QC
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I voted.
I think the strobe has very high visibility.
It can be tuned very quickly on stage.