My old state-of-the-art Korg electronic tuner has been through the wringer, and after a bzillion moves, I’ve lost the cord that lets me plug it in to the wall. So that led me to join the 21st century in search of app on my iPhone that would let me tune anytime, anywhere. I stumbled upon the Tuner Lite app from p!usadd, because the price was right…FREE! There is a paid version of this app, but I have found that the free version is quite adequate for my needs.
There are two modes for tuning: one that uses your phone’s speaker that will play the pitch for you, and another that uses your phone’s microphone, which visually represents your pitch on a spectrum with a needle, analog-style. (I usually use the latter.)
You can adjust the sensitivity of the app, which is helpful if you are trying to tune in a particularly noisy environment. Look for that option under the “settings” gear located in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
You can calibrate it to a setting besides 440 Hz if you need to, and I’m not quite sure what the limits of calibration are. I didn’t bother to check that out, but I took the settings all the way down to 400 and up as high as 460, when I was playing around with it one day, but it could have gone beyond that range. I can’t imagine needing to go anywhere nearly that far, but it’s nice to know you have options.
For those of us to whom aesthetics are important, you can even change the color of the metronome by swiping left or right. There are 4 options: red, blue, black, and white.
There are other options available on the paid version, such as wallpaper, transposition, and temperament. If you’re just looking for a basic, no frills, equal temperament, chromatic tuner, though, I can heartily recommend this one. I’ve used it to work with several different ensembles and have found it to be reliable and very handy.
If you have a favorite tuner, please let me know!