Talk:Cent (music)

message: Hi, I am reading in this little book by M. le Baron de Prony, Instruction Elémentaire sur les moyens de calculer les intervalles musicaux ("en prenant, pour unités ou termes de comparaison, soit l'octave, soit le douzième d'octave,..." Firmin Didot, Paris. 1834) where he introduces a notation for intervals using logarithmic tables and writes about "centièmes de demiton" comparing just intonation to equal temperament.
Bosanquet also proposes that semitones are convenient expressing intervals but cedes De Morgan's precedent for the method of calculation used in On the Theory of the Division of the Octave. Mireut 20:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''The measure was developed by A. J. Ellis around the 1870s''

message: A recent edit of mine was reverted with the edit summary "why would you use a decimal in a fraction?".  That's such a bizarre justification, I'm not even sure how to respond.  Really, it's not even an objection; it's a question, and I have an answer: I did it because because 1/17.3 is much more accurate than 1/17.  Please don't revert my edit again unless you can provide a reason that the article is better without it.  --Doradus (talk) 14:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decimal in a fraction 

message: The last paragraph might be better explained if it included a link to Beat (acoustics), though I'm not entirely sure if that's what the author was driving at. --scruss (talk) 11:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Paragraph rewritten. __Just plain Bill (talk) 14:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awkward definition in Sound Files section 

message: The three uploaded small interval audio files for 1 cent, 6 cents, and 10 cents, sound to me constant pitch, that is, zero interval. I have listened to Ten_Cents_Interval.ogg repeatedly using both Cortado (Java) and QuickTime. I always hear just one tone. I strongly believe I would be able to detect an interval of 10 cents. I suspect that these files were not constructed correctly. Does anyone hear actual pitch intervals? Anomalocaris (talk) 03:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Since some people can't hear the 10-cent difference and other people barely can, it seems we could use some files with bigger differences, say 20 cents and 50 cents.CountMacula (talk) 00:31, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoops, since it is an exponential scale, I would make the sequence of files linear in the exponent.  I would think that 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 cents should be adequate for most people to find their approximate threshold.CountMacula (talk) 00:40, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Playing them with XMMS I hear the ten-cents sharp tone as just a fraction of a fine hair brighter than the reference tone. I can convince myself that I hear a similar but smaller difference with the six cents example. The one-cent difference sounds the same to me. In all three files, the third tone shows beats that demonstrate two different frequencies played together. __Just plain Bill (talk) 12:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

text: I think it would be better if the samples were pure tones rather than that foghorn-like thing.  Also, they should last longer, maybe 2x as long.  I can hear a slight difference in the 10-cent sample but not the other two.  I can hear beats in the mixed samples at 6 and 10 cents but not the 1 cent.  Beats in the 1 cent mixed sample would probably be audible if it were played longer.  The other thing is that the unmixed samples seem to have beats of their own, making the whole thing slightly uncertain.  It might be better to use FLAC rather than ogg for these samples, to avoid introducing coding artifacts 67.122.211.205 (talk) 04:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: They should be louder, too.  I have my speakers and my software volume control both turned up all the way, and still the files do not play nearly as loud as I want.  A file with normal volume fills the room turned up as loud as I have it set.CountMacula (talk) 00:31, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Regarding the foghorn timbre: see http://pom.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/08/23/0305735610373602.abstract "Does timbre affect pitch? Estimations by musicians and non-musicians".  The answer seems to be that it does.CountMacula (talk) 04:35, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

text: I'm relieved to find it's not just me that finds the 6 cents difference imperceptible.  I think I can detect a tiny difference in the 10 cent interval, but of course this is not a blind test.  I have seen some research suggesting that about 14 cents is the smallest interval that most people can reliably distinguish in a double-blind randomised test.  All this casts doubt on the claim in the present text that a 6 cent difference is usually perceptible.86.159.83.224 (talk) 18:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

text: Your files sound good. Thanks for going to the trouble. Binksternet (talk) 22:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The audio sounds good, but the frequency differences in the desciptions under the files and in the bullet points above do not match. Which are the correct ones?−Woodstone (talk) 08:57, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Binksternet! Also, Woodstone, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you talking about the three audio file links above the audio files that say 1 cent difference, 10.06 cent difference, and 25 cent difference? Those are separate MIDI files of a piano, I didn't add those. Sorry if that's not what you're talking about! -Imagination deprivation (talk) 14:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the bullet points (or rather speaker points) confused me. Why not remove them. It does not seem useful to have two very similar sets of examples. Your artificially constructed ones demonstrate the effect smore clearly.−Woodstone (talk) 15:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I do agree that they do confuse the reader but I'm not sure if they should be deleted or if the formatting should just be changed due to them actually adding a bit of information on beat frequencies. I think it might be better to reach a consensus with more editors. -Imagination deprivation (talk) 00:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Small interval audio files

message: How many links to do we need to the same site? The article could look like this:
==External links==
*Cent conversion: Whole number ratio to cent
*Cent conversion: Online utility with several functions
*"Adaptive pitch test", Tonometric.com.
*"Adaptive pitch test", Tonometric.com.
*"Adaptive pitch test", Tonometric.com.
but we may all agree that it is unnecessary. Before accusing me of having given no reason for removing the duplicate link, why don't you address the reason I gave, or even give a reason for including it in the first place? Hyacinth (talk) 20:30, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicate links

message: Can some folks in the know please check the graph :File:Music intervals frequency ratio equal tempered pythagorean_comparison.svg embedded in the present article at Cent_%28music%29#Use for accuracy?  It seems to me as that it does not agree with the table at Pythagorean_tuning#Method.CountMacula (talk) 08:12, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As the comment in the file says: all intervals are tuned up from the tonic. So you will notice that the deviation grows with the circle of fifths, starting from C (C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#=F). In the table, the start is chosen at D and part of the scale (A, E, B, F#, C#, G#) is tuned forward (using factors 3 and 1/2), the other part (G, C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab) backward (using factors 1/3 and 2). Why these different paths are taken I do not know, but it's only a matter of calibration. The scale steps are the same. −Woodstone (talk) 16:43, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see why anyone should have to care where on the circle of fifths the sequence starts.  Unless I am wrong, we are talking about generating a generalized 12-tone scale.  In my objection above, I have ignored the letter names and taken heed of only the interval names.  The table in Pythagorean tuning shows that half the Pythagorean intervals are larger than the corresponding ET intervals, whereas the table and the graph in Cents (music) show all the Pythagorean intervals as larger than the corresponding ET intervals.CountMacula (talk) 03:54, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The Circle of Fifths defined by factors 3/2 (and reduced by factors 2 to stay within one octave) is not actually a circle. After 12 steps it does not meet the start: 312 = 5314413, while 219 = 524288, a difference of 1.36%, a substantial fraction of a half step being 5.95%. So the closing step to force only 12 notes is shorter than the other ones. The location of this break is important. For each choice, a different map to the equidistant scale is obtained. The table and the graph use different starting points. −Woodstone (talk) 17:21, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The figure includes very odd intervals. There is no reason, for instance that the deviation between Pythagorean and ET be larger for the 4th than for the 5th. The "4th" in the figure actually is an augmented 3d (C-E#); similarly, the minor 3d actually is an augmented second (C-D#), and the minor 7th actually an augmented 6th (C-A#). That is to say that the labels in the figure are wrong, and to say that "all intervals are tuned up from the tonic" doesn't justify these. The only solution would be to show the intervals in the order of the cycle of fifths rather than as an ascending scale, as in the figure illustrating the List of pitch intervals. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please check the Music intervals requency ratio equal tempered pythagorean comparison file 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Free, online web sites for self-testing are available."Adaptive pitch test ", Tonometric.com
I removed the above because the citation links to a web resource that is Flash-only. 
* Adobe Flash
Although Flash was previously a dominant platform for online multimedia content, it is slowly being abandoned as Adobe favors a transition to HTML5. Flash Player has been deprecated and has an official end-of-life at the end of 2020.
:...
Starting from Chrome 76 and Firefox 69, Flash is disabled by default and browsers do not even show a prompt to activate Flash content.
It was a bit of an odd duck to begin with. Not a fatal crime per se, as I personally tilt toward moderation in all things. Even so, an odd duck dragging a limp wing surely crosses a line in the sand. — MaxEnt 20:22, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flash-only 

message: There's a mention of decibels. Other than being a logarithm, there's no connection, and I'd say that its mention is more harmful than helpful (since both have something to do with sound, but are otherwise unrelated). Gvanrossum (talk) 05:46, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree and remove some more possibly confusing and unnecessary text. −Woodstone (talk) 06:39, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decibels 

message: I note that the Centitone section of the article compares centitones with savarts, which otherwise are only mentioned in footnote a. Footnote a, on the other hand, mentions Caramuel, Newton, Sauveur, Prony and Savart. The question then arises why centitones are mentioned in the article and not in the note, while the musical logarithms mentioned in the note may be better known. We didn't decide about whether the Centitone section must be maintained and I wonder whether the question should not be rephrased as follows: 
*Why is there a section on Centitones while there is none on heptamerides, on pronys, on savarts, etc.? 
Or else, should we not replace the Centitone section by one on the history of musical logarithms? It may be interesting to note that the French wikipedia, which has an article on "Cent et savart", because savarts are sometimes still in use in French, has a section on History that seems reasonablty complete (I am among its authors, that's why ;–)). If others agree (or if they say nothing against the idea), I could translate it from the French and replace with it the Centitone section (while mentioning centitones in the History section, of course). — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 10:28, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I made in the article itself a proposal concerning other logarithms. Feel free to improve. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 10:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Centitones, savarts, pronys, etc.