Manual
Getting started
Allow microphone access when Strobie asks. Play a single note and let it ring. Strobie finds the note, shows it on the ruler and turns the strobe against it.
The stripes turn left when the note is flat and right when it is sharp. The slower they turn, the closer the note is. When they stand still, the note is in tune.
Main screen
Ruler and gauge
The ruler shows the note being tuned, with its neighbours on either side. The gauge under it shows how far off the note is, up to half a semitone. A pitch between two notes stays on the note it came from until it is 60 cents away, so it doesn't flip between them. With a guitar or another stringed instrument picked, the ruler holds only its strings, and the gauge reaches a few semitones out so a string can be brought up from far off. Further than that, it says Too flat or Too sharp.
Note lock
Without the lock, the ruler follows whatever note is played. Tap the lock, or the note, to hold it. Another note played then pins the gauge at the end on its side, and the strobe stays on the locked note. Swipe the ruler or tap another note on it to lock that one instead.
Readout
The frequency in hertz and how far off the note is in cents, both to a tenth. The readout comes from the strobe, so 0.0 cents is where the stripes stand still. Readout speed in the strobe's options sets how long it averages.
The arrows on the strobe point the way to tune when the note is more than about 10 cents off.
Buttons
- Display, under the strobe: the next display. See Displays.
- Sliders icon: the settings. See Settings.
- Instrument, in the bottom left corner: the piano or guitar icon and the name of what's tuned to. See Instrument.
- Microphone and level: the input level. Tap it for the input's details. See Input.
Displays
Each display has its own options. Open the settings, pick the display and tap › next to it.
Strobe
The tracks of a strobe tuner. Each track stands still when its note is in tune.
- Shape: Flat tracks, a Wheel, or Curved tracks.
- Turned by: Lock-in measures each track's partial directly, and is smooth and steady. Lamp turns the tracks from the Lamp display's picture, closer to how a mechanical strobe behaves, but a pluck or a weak partial can make the stripes jump. Use Lock-in unless you want to compare the two.
- Mode: Harmonic gives each track its own partial of the note, see Tracks. Vernier puts every track on the fundamental, each turning twice as fast as the one under it, so the top tracks show small errors and the bottom ones large ones.
- Spin rate: 200% turns the stripes twice as fast for the same error. Use it for the final adjustment.
- Readout speed: 0.4 s evens out a vibrato into its average pitch. 0.15 s follows a tuning peg sooner. The stripes respond at once either way.
- Motion smoothing: Off, Short, Medium or Long. Longer smooths the stripes on an unsteady note, the way a mechanical strobe's lamp blurs them.
- Partials: the label on each track. Off, the partial (1×, 2×…), its frequency in Hz, or its note. Harmonic mode only.
- Track cents: how far off each track's partial is, on the track. Harmonic mode only.
Scope
The waveform, on an oscilloscope whose sweep follows the note. In tune, the wave stands still. The sweeps are averaged like on a lab oscilloscope, so the room's noise cancels out and the wave stays clean, and a detuned note blurs like the stripes. Tap the scope to switch the sweep.
- Sweep: Time draws the wave across the screen, drifting left when the note is flat and right when it is sharp, like the stripes. Circle wraps two periods of the wave around a ring, the crests reaching out and the troughs dipping in toward the middle, so a note draws petals, more of them the more partials it has. They turn anticlockwise when the note is flat and clockwise when it is sharp.
- Low-pass: On keeps the first few partials of the wave and drops the fine wiggles of the higher ones and the hiss, so the shape reads clearly. Off draws the wave as it comes.
- Beam: Solid draws an even line. Phosphor draws it like an analog oscilloscope's, bright where the beam lingers and dim where it moves fast, with a soft glow.
- Gain: Autoset sets the height on each pluck or new note and holds it, so the note decays on the screen. Uniform keeps every sweep the same size, so the note stays full height until it fades into the noise.
Trace
The readout's cents over the last few seconds. Useful for seeing a vibrato or a slow drift.
- Span: Short, Medium or Long, 1, 2 or 5 seconds across.
- Range: Narrow is ±25 cents top to bottom, Wide is ±50 cents.
Lamp
The disc of a mechanical strobe, lit by a lamp that flashes with the wave. The stripes drift when the note is off, and blur to gray when it drifts fast. Tap the lamp to switch the rectifier.
- Rectifier: Half lights the lamp on the upper half of the wave, like a mechanical strobe. None shows the whole wave. Split shows both halves apart.
- Persistence: Off, Short, Medium or Long. How long the stripes stay lit, and how long the Scope averages its sweeps.
Spectrum
The frequencies the pitch detection hears, with the loudest peaks named. It is not for tuning, its peaks are too wide. It shows what is there, for example a hum louder than the string.
- Window: 85, 170 or 340 ms. A longer window gives narrower peaks but reacts slower.
- Scale: SNR draws each frequency against the noise around it, so only what stands out rises. dBFS draws the level itself.
- Labels: on the peaks, Off, the Note, the frequency in Hz, or Both.
- Peak level: a line at the loudest peak, with its level.
Tracks
In Harmonic mode the strobe has up to 5 tracks, each on one partial of the note: 1× is the fundamental, 2× the octave, 3× the octave and a fifth, and so on up to 8×. 1½× is the fifth above the fundamental. Tap a track to change it.
- Partial: 1× to 8×, or 1½×. Double-tap the value to put back the original.
- Target offset: up to ±50 cents in half-cent steps. The track stands still this far off the exact partial, for example for a stretched octave on a piano.
- Spin rate: 25%, 50%, 100% or 200%, on top of the strobe's spin rate. A high partial turns faster than the fundamental, so it can help to slow it down.
- Reset track: the partial, offset and spin rate back as they were.
- Add and Remove: a track on top, or the top one taken away. A new track is on the next whole partial above.
Tap another track while the sheet is open to switch to it.
Settings
- Concert A: 400 to 480 Hz, 440 by default. Double-tap the value to go back to 440.
- Display: which display shows. Tap › for its options, see Displays.
- Colors: Red, Mint, Amber, Mono, or By note, the colour wheel swatch. By note gives every note its own colour, in rainbow order up the scale: C red, D orange, E yellow, then green and blue to a violet B. A sharp sits between its neighbours, and a note out of tune leans toward the next one's colour. It's a quick way to see which note you're on from across the room; the note's name stays on screen.
- Retro glow: lights the stripes like a lamp behind a disc.
- In-tune tap: on iPhone, one tap once the readout holds within a cent. It taps again only after the note moves more than 3 cents away, or a new note is played.
- Reset to defaults: every setting back to the default. Tap RESET, then SURE? to confirm. Your presets are kept.
Instrument
Tap the instrument in the bottom left corner. The menu at the top picks what you tune: Chromatic, a built-in instrument, or one of four presets.
Chromatic
Every note from A0 to C8 on the ruler.
- Transpose: the key of a transposing instrument, for example B♭ for a trumpet or clarinet, or E♭ for an alto saxophone. Notes are then shown as written for that instrument. Only the names change.
Stringed instruments
Guitar, 7-string guitar, bass, ukulele and baritone ukulele. The ruler holds only the strings, in the order they are usually tuned.
- Tuning: standard and alternate tunings, for example Drop D, DADGAD or Open G on a guitar.
- Capo: up to the 7th fret. The strings keep the names of the open strings, like chord shapes do.
Presets
Four slots for your own instruments. A preset has an instrument with its tuning and capo or transpose, and its own note offsets. Two guitars in the same tuning can each have a preset. Changing a preset's instrument clears its offsets and capo.
Note offsets
Presets only. Tune a note up to ±25 cents away from equal temperament, for example a guitar's B string a touch flat. The strobe stands still and the readout reads 0 at the offset pitch. On the main screen, the offset shows next to the note.
On a stringed instrument there is a row for each string. On Chromatic, Add a row for each note you want to offset, up to 10, and REMOVE takes away the selected row. CLEAR, then SURE?, clears every offset in the preset: the strings go back to 0 cents, and the Chromatic rows are removed.
Input
Tap the microphone and level on the main screen.
- Device: on Mac, the microphone or audio interface. On iPhone the system picks the input.
- Sample rate: the input's rate. Below 44.1 kHz, for example a Bluetooth headset, the high notes and partials are out of reach, and a warning shows next to the microphone on the main screen.
- Level: how loud the input is.
- Noise floor: the level of the room with no note playing.
- SNR: how far the note is above the noise floor. The stripes start to show at about 8 dB, and the readout at 16 dB. If the tuner doesn't settle on a note, play closer to the microphone or make the room quieter.
Keyboard
On Mac.
- 1 to 5: Strobe, Scope, Trace, Lamp, Spectrum.
- Tab: the next display.
- Space or ⌘L: lock or unlock the note.
- ← and →: the note below or above.
- G: retro glow on or off.
- I: the next set of track partials, 1 2 4, 1 1½ 2 or 1 2 3. Harmonic mode only. This replaces what was set on each track.
- ⌘,: the settings.
- ⌘0: the window back to its default size.
Something not covered here, or not working? See Support.