iphone app: Cleartone Tuner

I was looking for a digital tuner application to add to my iphone, so that I am never without a digital tuner. There are so many times that I am in a vendors booth at festival, looking at purchasing a new instrument, or even checking the tuning of my 'toys' at the beginning of a jam session. I thought that it would be useful to have a digital tuner app on my iphone.

After some research and looking at reviews for all of the digital tuner applications in the iTunes app store, I decided to purchase the Cleartune app from bitcount.

Cleartune features a unique "note wheel" interface allowing you to quickly find your pitch, paired with a highly responsive fine-tuning meter for the perfect tune. See the screenshot above for what it looks like. Some of the other features that I like include:

• You can change the sensitivity of the needle, so that it doesn't bounce around so much.
• You can select: "Pitchpipe" to have it generate a tone
• You can select up to 23 temperaments out of the box, and you can enter in your own.
• Cleartune supports A4 calibration in increments of 0.1Hz.

All in all, I really like the design and function of this application.

Link: http://www.bitcount.com/cleartune/

Does the Belkin TuneTalk work with iPhone?

I discovered that the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo microphone indeed functions beautifully with my iPhone 3G. I purchased the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo microphone originally, to use with my iPod fifth generation. It worked great with my iPod, except for the occasion hickup when the iPod 5G would pause for a second to write to disk (very annoying). But the sound quality was great. When I purchased my iPhone 3G, I was curious if it would work, so I plugged the microphone into my iPhone. It fits perfectly, however, you get the following message popping up on the screen when you plug it in.

But if you discard the message (by tapping on NO) and them open up the iTalk application (by Griffin Technology) you now have an awesome portable digital recorder. I haven't found anything better yet for the iPhone to record great sound. Plus the microphone is so small that I can pop it in my shirt or jacket pocket and easily insert it into my iPhone when I need to record something.

Plus the the TuneTalk has a stereo mini-jack for a line in, which means that you can easily insert an out from the master board line out at a show if you need to record something live.

I use this all the time now to record events, meetings, songs, interviews, inspirational moments.

Links

iTalk application: http://www.italksync.com/

Belkin TuneTalk: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=277661