Show HN: Remotely use my guitar tuner

Posted by smith-kyle 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by eranation 12 hours ago

Linking it here since it's easy to miss. It seems he is using the popularity of this to help a friend recovering from brain surgery, I think this makes this project even more awesome in my book.

https://smith-kyle.github.io/

Comment by 999900000999 12 hours ago

Donated. I always thought Playboy manbaby was a solo act nerdcore rapper.

But this is cool.

Comment by eranation 12 hours ago

Thanks! Donated as well. When I grow up I want to have friends that will do the same to me...

Comment by stavros 4 hours ago

When you grow up you should want universal healthcare...

Comment by 999900000999 4 hours ago

Americans don’t want that.

We want to live in hell where any serious illness will completely ruin you.

Comment by schinken23 6 hours ago

Do you guys know this? https://www.thomann.co.uk/stompenberg_devices.html

You can use real pedals over the internet

there's a german blog post about this: https://www.amazona.de/thomann-stompenberg-fx/

Comment by TrackerFF 15 hours ago

Thomann had (still have?) this thing called "stompenberg", where they put up some mechanical switching system so that you could play audio files through the actual pedals in the system, and turn on the knobs / parameters.

In the recent years some smaller businesses have started to offer outboard gear in this way. You upload some stem, and can process it through their hardware remotely, and get back the results.

Comment by hunter2_ 13 hours ago

This is cool except that the only ad for this I've come across so far was for analog summing. Remote or not, that concept (going out of one's way to theoretically have something more pleasing than digital summing) always smelled like a scam to me. Like ok, maybe a sample rate a hair above what Shannon/Nyquist demand can't do digital summing with all the right IM distortion of the missing supersonic content or whatever, but 192kHz ought to solve for that! So is it something else to be gained via analog summing?

Comment by Nition 10 hours ago

Oh the options get way better than that. Check these guys out: https://accessanalog.com

They have 60+ rack units with little robot grabbers physically controlling the knobs.

Re analogue summing, yeah it does near nothing in reality. What you're missing though is that what people actually want with analogue summing isn't really technically better sound but technically worse sound. Analogue gear might have a little bit of harmonic distortion, a little bit of crosstalk between channels, certain transformer characteristics etc that theoretically make it sound more glued together or warm etc etc. But ultimately summing is summing and those differences vs. digital are very small (and won't always contribute positively either).

Comment by peepee1982 10 hours ago

I'm not interested in analog summing myself, but I think you're missing the point. It's not about "better" summing. You want more euphonic summing. Analog audio processing often comes with artefacts that give the signal sent through it a more pleasing character, for whatever reason (phase shift, saturation, channel differences between left and right, transient modulation, slew rate, power sag, etc.).

I personally think analog summing is a waste of time, because the differences are too subtle to be worth the investment in setting it up. But that's just my opinion. Some people are really into it (Eric Valentine comes to mind).

Just wanted to point out that in the context of audio equipment (both professional and audiophile) "sounds better" often means "sounds worse but more engaging". Just like a polaroid picture often evokes more emotions than a photo taken with a modern digital camera and a great lens.

Comment by smith-kyle 12 hours ago

No way! My friend and I were half joking about building that as a sequel to realtuner. If nothing else, it'd be a great excuse to buy more gear.

Comment by sagacity 6 hours ago

Do you really need an excuse to buy more gear? meme-be-honest.jpg

Comment by dbdr 9 hours ago

On Firefox/Linux, after allowing mic access, I get a "Failed to access microphone" above the button, and in the javascript console:

[ws] Microphone error: DOMException: AudioContext.createMediaStreamSource: Connecting AudioNodes from AudioContexts with different sample-rate is currently not supported.

Comment by cammikebrown 9 hours ago

Sounds like normal Linux behavior to me

Comment by copperx 15 hours ago

This is awesome, and, at the same time, hilarious. The BOSS tuner is the laggiest thing ever, and we're adding network latency to it!

Maybe we all can pitch in for a Turbo Tuner. Or some vintage mechanical strobe tuner for hipster points!

Comment by smith-kyle 15 hours ago

Let's scale horizontally!

Comment by behehebd 4 hours ago

As the actress said to the bishop

Comment by jsd1982 2 hours ago

Very cool idea, but unfortunately the browser doesn't allow users to select which channel of their audio interface to use as input. So unless you're plugging your guitar into input 1 this doesn't work out. I have my microphone in input 1 and my guitar in input 2.

Comment by locusofself 9 hours ago

I love it.

But in all seriousness, if you are looking for a good guitar tuner, a lot of the ones on the market are actually not very good.

I highly recommend TC Electronic for clip-on tuner, or Sonic Research or Peterson for pedal tuners.

source: playing guitar for 32 years

Comment by lenwood 36 minutes ago

Agree that most leave something to be desired. TC Electronic polytune is great and I also use the pedal to mute my signal. I'm surprised to say this, but my favorite tuner is the one in the L6 Helix.

Comment by dsego 6 hours ago

I use a Peterson strobe tuner on my smartphone, it's really good. I've also coded my own strobe tuner to learn more, unfortunately no mobile version yet.

https://github.com/dsego/strobe-tuner

Comment by eternauta3k 9 hours ago

Could you go into more detail on why they are bad?

Comment by bob1029 8 hours ago

The oboe playing a concert A is a pretty good one too.

Comment by Humphrey 9 hours ago

I love my TC Electronic clip on tuner!

Comment by redbluething 15 hours ago

I am not sure why this exists, but I am glad it does.

Comment by hshdhdhj4444 14 hours ago

The website explains why this exists.

> Real guitarists use real tuners.

Comment by Benjamin_Dobell 4 hours ago

Thanks. Just tuned my daughter's guitar.

Obviously a bit more work. But it'd be pretty neat to have live reactions. "So close!", "Nearly there", "You can do it!", "Perfect" etc.

Comment by hunter2_ 13 hours ago

On my Pixel 10 using Chrome, it says "Mic needed - refresh to allow" but refreshing doesn't change anything. It's possible that I did something years ago to prevent whatever permission popup might normally be offered?

Comment by smith-kyle 13 hours ago

Your browser might have microphone access set to "Deny" by default rather than "Ask". This happened to my friend. He changed the setting and it worked, but maybe there's a way to give a more helpful error in this scenario. Let me see

Comment by nosioptar 13 hours ago

Got the same, Firefox on lineageos.

Comment by pastorhudson 13 hours ago

This is hilarious and fun. Thanks for making it.

Comment by cluckindan 15 hours ago

You keep your tuner in a terrarium?

”This appliance must be earthed”?

Comment by Havoc 13 hours ago

That’s some serious out of the box thinking

Comment by anemoknee 15 hours ago

this is hilarious. and surprisingly responsive! i used this to tune an acoustic bass guitar i have

Comment by Johnny_Bonk 14 hours ago

Unbelievable, thank you and can you add open g or drop d tuning pweez?

Comment by post-it 12 hours ago

Can't it already do those since it's chromatic?

Comment by LouisLazaris 12 hours ago

I guess he would have to add a way to interact with the tuner's UI to switch to a different setting other than standard tuning.

Comment by sunnybeetroot 12 hours ago

It’s a chromatic tuner, there is no other setting

Comment by LouisLazaris 12 hours ago

Ah yes, my bad!

Comment by rhaps0dy 13 hours ago

Thank you, this was fun, I sang notes for a bit :)

Comment by sealthedeal 2 hours ago

love this, just tuned up a guitar.

Comment by zoklet-enjoyer 14 hours ago

This reminds me of the Internet of my childhood. People just having fun and experimenting with a new medium. Thank you for sharing.

Comment by behehebd 4 hours ago

This guy tunes!

Comment by CodinM 8 hours ago

Tuned my guitar and donated 5$!

Comment by koinedad 15 hours ago

Pretty wild, nice job

Comment by austinjp 14 hours ago

\m/

Comment by yukapero 8 hours ago

Tried it, dope idea. No Pi or tuner req'd really. Why we all love these goofy hacks so bad

Comment by behnamoh 10 hours ago

Guitar tuner as a service was not on my 2026 bingo card but here we are. Creative project!