AP Tuner

AP Tuner is an electronic tuning program that can be used to tune any instrument from a guitar to a piano.

This shareware tuner for Windows comes as a small executable file and is fairly simple to use. The file installs quickly and will run after a quick set up. The interface is quite simple, but don't let the simplicity fool you; if you are a musician seeking to accurately measures notes down to cents, this program is all you need. Its note detection function spans over eight octaves and has an algorithm that corrects many octave or fifth errors found in other programs.

The tuning settings menu provides several options not offered by handheld tuners. It includes a number of temperaments, such as the standard equal temperament, the Pythagorean temperament, just intonation, and others. These can be defined by key or edited as needed. The middle A frequency is adjustable; it starts at 440 hz and has the option to adjust down to cents. The program also allows you to use a stretch table or transpose up to eleven steps.

You can alter the recording analysis quality by choosing either fast or normal, and you can calibrate options for the recording device from inside the program. AP Tuner can also open the Windows Recording Control dialogue box if you are using an appropriate version of Windows. There are several display options, including a harmonics graph, the choice to round off the cents, and the display rate.

The free version of AP Tuner still works in later versions of Windows, but it is no longer being updated or supported. The creator has continued updating the program with paid versions that are available through Google Play and the iTunes store. But for a free program that will probably continue to work for some time to come, AP Tuner can't be beat.

Pros

Free tuner with several functions and settings

Selection of built-in temperaments that can be edited

Cons

Somewhat technical settings controls

Newer versions only available for iTunes and Android