Talk:Frequency counter

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[edit] Electronic tuner?

Hi. Are the "electronic tuners" used by musicians to tune instruments (like this one) examples of frequency counters, or are these tuners a different thing? Thanks. --Allen 01:08, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

They work on a different principle, in that internally they generate a set of reference tones corresponding to the tuned note, and mix this with the incoming signal in a quadrature detector. The output of this is a DC signal that corresponds to the frequency difference between the input and the ref tone, and is used to drive the meter. It's a lot simpler doing it this way than trying to actually count the incoming frequency, especially as musical instruments generate a lot of harmonics and simply counting might not work very well anyway. Graham 03:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll make a separate stub for these music tuners, then. --Allen 03:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)