After months of hard work, I am happy to release the beta version of pianoscope 1.8 to TestFlight today. The biggest change is a new algorithm for calculating tuning curves which should fix the issue some people were having with too little stretch in the bass, especially on medium sized grands.

If you are interested in trying it out, feel free to install it via the following link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5cCSBj1z

Note: To use the test build of pianoscope you need to make an in-app purchase, even if you have already purchased the app. But don't worry, this will just be a test transaction and nothing will be charged for it. You can always return to the release build of pianoscope by re-downloading it in the App Store app.

I would love to know how it works for you all. So please let me know. For now, I am only starting the beta in this small forum group. You can however share the link if you want to. Later I will broaden the test to a larger audience.

There are also a couple of other nice features in this release, so check out the release notes.

New Features:

New algorithm (v2) for calculating tuning curves. It improves the bass stretch especially on medium size grands and the treble of pure twelfths tunings. For compatibility reasons, existing tuning documents will keep on using the old algorithm v1 until they are explicitly switched to v2 in the tuning curve panel (pro version) or if the tuning style is changed.
In the pro version, in addition to using the styles you can now also record an existing tuning as a so called Static Tuning. Static tunings are a great way to conserve and recreate aural tunings.
When pressing the plus button in the tuning curve panel, you can now choose to either create a new style or to record a new static tuning. Recorded static tunings appear in a separate section below the tuning styles and can be selected similarly. Static tunings are individual to an instrument and are therefore stored within the tuning documents.
You can also use static tunings to copy an aural tuning from one instrument to another, like for piano duets. Be aware that when you apply a static tuning to an instrument of different size or inharmonicity, the tuning indicator can be more unsteady as pianoscope regards multiple partials to determine the pitch.
In the instrument settings, the panel for setting the concert pitch now has a new menu button in its toolbar with two new functions: Measure and Optimize. When you choose Measure, the microphone activates and you can play an A4 to adopt its current pitch.
The Optimize function goes even further. With it you can sample the current pitch of multiple notes across the scale to find an optimal concert pitch which on average results in the least needed pitch changes.
There are three ways to use this function:
1) If you are setting up a new document and you have not yet measured its inharmonicity, the Optimize function opens the inharmonicity panel and lets you immediately perform the measurement. After you are done, the concert pitch is automatically adjusted.
2) If you have already measured the inharmonicity, you get a dialog in which you can choose to simply use the measured values if they are recent.
3) If you have a document with an older measurement, a panel comes up which guides through sampling a couple of notes. Once you have finished, the concert pitch is automatically adjusted.
The main menu now has a new item for turning on sound generation which can be used for chipping a newly strung piano or to train auditory matching.
When activated, a continuous synthetic tone is played. Its pitch, inharmonicity and partial intensities match the selected tuning curve and the parameters collected during inharmonicity measuring. If a note was not measured, they are interpolated from neighbouring measured notes.
In the general settings, there is a new entry which also allows to switch the spectrum of the generated tones to a single pure sine.

Changes

In the instruments setting panel, the row for changing the concert pitch is now at the bottom to better indicate that the new automatic concert pitch optimization function is dependent on the selections in the above options Tuning Style, Temperament and Range.
The application now better adapts to changing loudness levels.

Fixes

On a new 12.9" M1 iPad Pro, audio recording did not work.

Note: In some language localizations, the new features are not yet translated. I will try to work with the translators in the next days to get them translated.