Pano Tuner Lite 4+

I reached a point where I just could not stand my piano due to the middle section (where the kids bang out their music) being so out of tune. Tuner can’t get here for another week so I just needed something to get buy. I’m not a trained piano tech or tuner but I tried (in vain) to get that middle section at least close using the upper and lower registers as a point of reference but I just couldn’t figure it out well enough to get the temperament restored. Finally, desperate for at least a “survival” tuning to hold me until the pro can get here, I tried this app. After sampling the lower and upper registers, I could visually see how the octaves were stretched and could pick a point on the +/- measurement that followed the pattern. Lo and behold it worked! At least well enough to not hurt my ears until the pro can get hear and really get it dialed in. With the paid version I can get more precise visual range and expect it will become very helpful between visits from the pro tuner. If it can do a piano this well, I imagine it would be awesome for a guitar or violin.

I had my piano professionally tuned 2 weeks ago but my tuner must have spaced out on the last octave. It was horribly sharp and the last 5 notes sounded the same. Admittedly, most of us don’t play those notes that often but when they’re out of tune, you realize you play them more than you think. It was so bad that it was just too painful for me to wait for him to come back and fix his mistake. So after ordering a tuning kit, I downloaded this app.

As any pianist knows, the uppermost octave is particularly challenging to tune by ear because the strings are so short and the tone is so tinny.
I first tested the app on middle A and sure enough it read 339.9, close enough to A440 to which the piano was tuned. And, as I heard, the last octave was at least a quarter to a half step sharp. The tuner was able to distinguish between the uppermost 4 notes which all sounded identical to my ear.

The app is simple to use and extremely discerning and sensitive, even to very small adjustments. It is so sensitive that I caution everyone to make sure there is no ambient noise in the room while you’re tuning.

I don’t know what extra benefits the paid app provides other than no ads which are very unobtrusive in a thin bar at the top of the screen. Truthfully, the free app works so well I would have been happy to pay for it.

I must say, the older versions of this app left much to be desired— the tuner would frantically jump from frequency to frequency in a snappy hard-to-follow fashion, and pressing the “i” button (what is now the settings button) would simply crash the app on iOS 18. The app is now much smoother (and more stable) and now has a “note playback,” key changes, concert A calibration, and note labels (something that seems to be a cool unique feature of this particular tuner), all for free! The paid version also has its own impressive additional features, but the instruments I play that I have access to I do not play enough that they need the highly specialized, reliable, and versatile tuning that it provides in this chapter of my life.
TL;DR: Great tuner! Get this one!