SynthMaker

Detuner question: How much is a cent in the detuner?

Archive · 2007 5 old posts

From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.

PaulRiedel ·

Hi!

Another question: As I understand correctly, doubling the value in the detuner raises the octave by one, so 1200 cent. But how much is one cent then? According to my leftover common sense, a cent would be 2 / 1200 = 0.00166666...7, but in the semitone detuner module posted by someone here, the value for one semitone are: +1: 1.05946 +2: 1.12246 +3: 1.18921 +4: 1.25992 +5: 1.33484 +6: 1.41421 +7: 1.49831 +8: 1.5874 +9: 1.68179 +10: 1.7818 +11: 1.88775

Shouldn't they be this though?: +1: 0.1666...7 +2: 0.333...3 +3: 0.5 +4: 0.666...4 +5: 0.8333...3 +6: 0.999...6 +7: 1.1666...2 +8: 1.333...28 +9: 1.4999...4 +10: 1.666...6 +11: 1.8333...26

And so how much does the "Fine" know detune the Signal? I believe it's not by any "real" cent value, correct?

Thanks a lot for all your guys' help!!

- Paul

doug4350 ·

Hi Paul,

If memory serves, think of a cent as centi- applies to the metric system. A cent is 1/100 of the frequency of the note being played (i.e. a semitone). So, an A4 (at 440 Hz) would have a cent of 4.40 Hz. An A5 (octave higher at 880 Hz) would have a cent of 8.80 Hz. I (still) haven't dove deep enough into dsp to realize the relationship between Hz and -1 - +1, but I'd figure there's some proportionality there... As there are 12 notes (semitones) in an octave explains why 1200 cents is an octave higher. I think you might be misunderstanding that an octave up is twice the frequency in Hz or something like that.

Hope that makes cents 🙂 Aloha, Doug

stefan ·

The toolbox detuner works on frequency and not pitch. If you want to convert from frequency to pitch you do: freq = baseFrequency * (2 ^ (semitones / 12))

which means that if you want to calculate what to multiply a frequency with to for instance raise it one semitone you'd do multiplier = 1 * (2 ^ (1/12));

or two semitones: multiplier = 1 * (2 ^ (2/12));

and so forth

hopefully this will get you the values seen in that list of values from the semitone detuner 🙂

PaulRiedel ·

Hmm, still doesn't make too much sense to me. Don't you agree that one cent must be 0.001666...7 if an Octave change is NewFreq = OldFreq * (2^Octavechange)? (so for 440 Hz: 880 = 440 * (2^1)) Because 2 / 1200 = 0.001666...7?

Maybe if thought about it too much now and ran head into a wall that I'm stuck in now 😉

stefan ·

PaulRiedel wrote: Hmm, still doesn't make too much sense to me. Don't you agree that one cent must be 0.001666...7 if an Octave change is NewFreq = OldFreq * (2^Octavechange)? (so for 440 Hz: 880 = 440 * (2^1)) Because 2 / 1200 = 0.001666...7?

Maybe if thought about it too much now and ran head into a wall that I'm stuck in now 😉

No, I do not agree 🙂 A cent change would be a multiplier of 2^(1/12), which is approx 1.059. If you multiply a frequency with this, you'll move up one cent.

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