Back in the day, I was also using a Boss TU-2 (now replaced by the TU-3 series) and I actually really liked the practicality of these as my guitar would always go through this tuner and I can immediately start tuning up my guitar without even worrying about turning the unit on. There are freeware and paid options such as GTune (freeware), Aurora DSP Tuna (Freeware) or TC Electronic Polytune (Paid), or Peterson StroboSoft (Paid).īut I don’t find these products as practical as pedal tuners or clip-on tuners. Personally, I have been using software guitar tuners for a long time. However, there are also instruments that don’t feature an output jack, so you simply need to attach a clip-on microphone, get a tuner that has a built-in microphone or simply get a clip-on tuner. This may be handy for most players as they can easily add these pedal tuners to their pedalboards. If you play an electric instrument, such as electric guitar, bass or acoustic guitar with an onboard preamp, you can actually consider buying tuners that come in guitar pedal formats. For these reasons, musicians need to purchase tuners that come in portable and hardware tuners that they can carry around. On top of that, it’s not easy to transport this tuning system with you everywhere you go. Even though this is an affordable way to tune up your instruments, it’s not always the most accurate way. Software plugin tuners work really well, however, you always need to connect your instrument to your external audio interface (if you have one) or use the built-in microphone on your computer to tune up.

Strobe tuner software