Cents - not dollars

[Dave2002]

I found this page about tuning interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)

The graph in that page showing the relationships between some intervals in different tuning systems is also of interest.

It seems that very small (fine) adjustments to tuning can be made - with appropriate instruments or recording equipment - and that most of us won't notice a few cents here or there.

A cent is effectively one hundredth of a semitone.

[gradus]

I found this page about tuning interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)

The graph in that page showing the relationships between some intervals in different tuning systems is also of interest.

It seems that very small (fine) adjustments to tuning can be made - with appropriate instruments or recording equipment - and that most of us won't notice a few cents here or there.

A cent is effectively one hundredth of a semitone.

Fascinating Dave. The only difference I could hear was the 10 cent example, unfortunately the simultaneous sounding for 1 and 6 didn't play.

[Dave2002]

Cents (in small numbers) are a pretty small shift in pitch. You mentioned being able to hear a difference with a 10 cent shift.
For A=440, a 10 cent shift moves it to 442.55 (up) or down to 437.47.

The next note up is B flat, which is 100 cents up at 466 (466.16 if you want to be mindlessly more precise).

Some guitar pedal pitch shift boxes have a detune option, which may give shifts of -15, -10, -5, 5, 10, 20, 25 cents or similarly small value. The Caline CP-36 box is claimed to have those shift possibilities. The shifts may be almost imperceptible, but if the original tone is played with the shifted note, then the timbre may change slightly, and low frequency beats may be heard.

[gradus]

Cents (in small numbers) are a pretty small shift in pitch. You mentioned being able to hear a difference with a 10 cent shift.
For A=440, a 10 cent shift moves it to 442.55 (up) or down to 437.47.

The next note up is B flat, which is 100 cents up at 466 (466.16 if you want to be mindlessly more precise).

Some guitar pedal pitch shift boxes have a detune option, which may give shifts of -15, -10, -5, 5, 10, 20, 25 cents or similarly small value. The Caline CP-36 box is claimed to have those shift possibilities. The shifts may be almost imperceptible, but if the original tone is played with the shifted note, then the timbre may change slightly, and low frequency beats may be heard.

That is a small difference so possibly my imagination playing tricks.

[Dave2002]

That is a small difference so possibly my imagination playing tricks.

Not necessarily, but I doubt that you are going to notice differences of one or two cents. I would expect a difference of 30-40 cents - roughly a third of a semitone, to be audible to most people. Piano tuners may work with very small differences, though they are perhaps not only trying to get the “best” pitch, but also what they consider to be the best sound. With multiple strings some people might prefer the sound if the strings aren’t all perfectly together.

[johnb]

IMO The audio samples on that website aren't really long enough to get used to and then recognise the differences in beat frequencies.