The difference in different ears is some ears hear accurately because Bruce brain is trained properly to hear the difference of beats Vs no beats at all and no beats is perfect tuning and o do this and hear tuners are not accurate. Very close though.

It’s not the ears it’s the person how they think or see what they are hearing and you can train to get it right. All ears are the same and hear the same but it’s the mind that sees things differently is all. Untrained or badly informed mind is the problem or that the person may just not listen critically also. They just say that sounds about right and that right there tells you it’s not perfectly right and only about as good as a tuner coils be. Or worse even.

I came up on this way late but I love the sheer salt in this statement. It’s true. I used to work in a studio and if some dude tried to tune by ear both my boss and I gave each other a look. It’s fine if you’re playing only one instrument and not using ANYTHING else whatsoever with it, but as soon as you add stems/samples, other instruments, or multiple singers it’s the most annoying thing in the world.

I used to love running their “ear-tuned” guitar track through a pitch correcting plugin, then showing them both in a blind test and them saying the pitch corrected one sounds better.

..and vinyl sounds better than lossless FLAC and film is better than full frame digital.

Accurate might be a poor word, tuning by ear is better. An electronic tuner can usually tune to a precise frequency, but it doesn’t compensate for alignment of harmonic nodes and the natural resonance of your instrument. A precisely tuned instrument can sound horrible, usually due to “beating” when harmonic nodes form from different notes/ internal resonances interacting. Only the human ear knows when being less precise sounds better.

Zactly. Well said, what is the difference if you are playing “ live” with prerecorded loops. I know when you go into the studio to record they usually don’t put up with ear tuning. It’s a lot of wasted time and money if everyone tunes to their ear. It may work out in a bar ( nobody listens anyhow) but not for precise recordings.

Dear God, how would tuning by ear EVER be more accurate when different people have different ears… What a ridiculous statement…