Thomann had (still have?) this thing called "stompenberg", where they put up some mechanical switching system so that you could play audio files through the actual pedals in the system, and turn on the knobs / parameters.
In the recent years some smaller businesses have started to offer outboard gear in this way. You upload some stem, and can process it through their hardware remotely, and get back the results.
hunter2_•Mar 10, 2026
This is cool except that the only ad for this I've come across so far was for analog summing. Remote or not, that concept (going out of one's way to theoretically have something more pleasing than digital summing) always smelled like a scam to me. Like ok, maybe a sample rate a hair above what Shannon/Nyquist demand can't do digital summing with all the right IM distortion of the missing supersonic content or whatever, but 192kHz ought to solve for that! So is it something else to be gained via analog summing?
They have 60+ rack units with little robot grabbers physically controlling the knobs.
Re analogue summing, yeah it does near nothing in reality. What you're missing though is that what people actually want with analogue summing isn't really technically better sound but technically worse sound. Analogue gear might have a little bit of harmonic distortion, a little bit of crosstalk between channels, certain transformer characteristics etc that theoretically make it sound more glued together or warm etc etc. But ultimately summing is summing and those differences vs. digital are very small (and won't always contribute positively either).
peepee1982•Mar 10, 2026
I'm not interested in analog summing myself, but I think you're missing the point. It's not about "better" summing. You want more euphonic summing. Analog audio processing often comes with artefacts that give the signal sent through it a more pleasing character, for whatever reason (phase shift, saturation, channel differences between left and right, transient modulation, slew rate, power sag, etc.).
I personally think analog summing is a waste of time, because the differences are too subtle to be worth the investment in setting it up. But that's just my opinion. Some people are really into it (Eric Valentine comes to mind).
Just wanted to point out that in the context of audio equipment (both professional and audiophile) "sounds better" often means "sounds worse but more engaging". Just like a polaroid picture often evokes more emotions than a photo taken with a modern digital camera and a great lens.
smith-kyle•Mar 10, 2026
No way! My friend and I were half joking about building that as a sequel to realtuner. If nothing else, it'd be a great excuse to buy more gear.
sagacity•Mar 10, 2026
Do you really need an excuse to buy more gear? meme-be-honest.jpg
cluckindan•Mar 9, 2026
You keep your tuner in a terrarium?
”This appliance must be earthed”?
copperx•Mar 10, 2026
This is awesome, and, at the same time, hilarious. The BOSS tuner is the laggiest thing ever, and we're adding network latency to it!
Maybe we all can pitch in for a Turbo Tuner. Or some vintage mechanical strobe tuner for hipster points!
smith-kyle•Mar 10, 2026
Let's scale horizontally!
behehebd•Mar 10, 2026
As the actress said to the bishop
anemoknee•Mar 10, 2026
this is hilarious. and surprisingly responsive! i used this to tune an acoustic bass guitar i have
redbluething•Mar 10, 2026
I am not sure why this exists, but I am glad it does.
hshdhdhj4444•Mar 10, 2026
The website explains why this exists.
> Real guitarists use real tuners.
koinedad•Mar 10, 2026
Pretty wild, nice job
Johnny_Bonk•Mar 10, 2026
Unbelievable, thank you and can you add open g or drop d tuning pweez?
post-it•Mar 10, 2026
Can't it already do those since it's chromatic?
LouisLazaris•Mar 10, 2026
I guess he would have to add a way to interact with the tuner's UI to switch to a different setting other than standard tuning.
sunnybeetroot•Mar 10, 2026
It’s a chromatic tuner, there is no other setting
LouisLazaris•Mar 10, 2026
Ah yes, my bad!
austinjp•Mar 10, 2026
\m/
zoklet-enjoyer•Mar 10, 2026
This reminds me of the Internet of my childhood. People just having fun and experimenting with a new medium. Thank you for sharing.
Forgeties79•Mar 10, 2026
I just used it to check my whistle tones. How fun!
pastorhudson•Mar 10, 2026
This is hilarious and fun. Thanks for making it.
Havoc•Mar 10, 2026
That’s some serious out of the box thinking
closetkantian•Mar 10, 2026
I love it
hunter2_•Mar 10, 2026
On my Pixel 10 using Chrome, it says "Mic needed - refresh to allow" but refreshing doesn't change anything. It's possible that I did something years ago to prevent whatever permission popup might normally be offered?
nosioptar•Mar 10, 2026
Got the same, Firefox on lineageos.
smith-kyle•Mar 10, 2026
Your browser might have microphone access set to "Deny" by default rather than "Ask". This happened to my friend. He changed the setting and it worked, but maybe there's a way to give a more helpful error in this scenario. Let me see
rhaps0dy•Mar 10, 2026
Thank you, this was fun, I sang notes for a bit :)
eranation•Mar 10, 2026
Linking it here since it's easy to miss. It seems he is using the popularity of this to help a friend recovering from brain surgery, I think this makes this project even more awesome in my book.
Donated. I always thought Playboy manbaby was a solo act nerdcore rapper.
But this is cool.
eranation•Mar 10, 2026
Thanks! Donated as well. When I grow up I want to have friends that will do the same to me...
stavros•Mar 10, 2026
When you grow up you should want universal healthcare...
999900000999•Mar 10, 2026
Americans don’t want that.
We want to live in hell where any serious illness will completely ruin you.
behnamoh•Mar 10, 2026
Guitar tuner as a service was not on my 2026 bingo card but here we are. Creative project!
sponno•Mar 10, 2026
sooo cool!
locusofself•Mar 10, 2026
I love it.
But in all seriousness, if you are looking for a good guitar tuner, a lot of the ones on the market are actually not very good.
I highly recommend TC Electronic for clip-on tuner, or Sonic Research or Peterson for pedal tuners.
source: playing guitar for 32 years
eternauta3k•Mar 10, 2026
Could you go into more detail on why they are bad?
Humphrey•Mar 10, 2026
I love my TC Electronic clip on tuner!
bob1029•Mar 10, 2026
The oboe playing a concert A is a pretty good one too.
dsego•Mar 10, 2026
I use a Peterson strobe tuner on my smartphone, it's really good.
I've also coded my own strobe tuner to learn more, unfortunately no mobile version yet.
On Firefox/Linux, after allowing mic access, I get a "Failed to access microphone" above the button, and in the javascript console:
[ws] Microphone error: DOMException: AudioContext.createMediaStreamSource: Connecting AudioNodes from AudioContexts with different sample-rate is currently not supported.
cammikebrown•Mar 10, 2026
Sounds like normal Linux behavior to me
yukapero•Mar 10, 2026
Tried it, dope idea. No Pi or tuner req'd really. Why we all love these goofy hacks so bad
25 Comments
In the recent years some smaller businesses have started to offer outboard gear in this way. You upload some stem, and can process it through their hardware remotely, and get back the results.
They have 60+ rack units with little robot grabbers physically controlling the knobs.
Re analogue summing, yeah it does near nothing in reality. What you're missing though is that what people actually want with analogue summing isn't really technically better sound but technically worse sound. Analogue gear might have a little bit of harmonic distortion, a little bit of crosstalk between channels, certain transformer characteristics etc that theoretically make it sound more glued together or warm etc etc. But ultimately summing is summing and those differences vs. digital are very small (and won't always contribute positively either).
I personally think analog summing is a waste of time, because the differences are too subtle to be worth the investment in setting it up. But that's just my opinion. Some people are really into it (Eric Valentine comes to mind).
Just wanted to point out that in the context of audio equipment (both professional and audiophile) "sounds better" often means "sounds worse but more engaging". Just like a polaroid picture often evokes more emotions than a photo taken with a modern digital camera and a great lens.
”This appliance must be earthed”?
Maybe we all can pitch in for a Turbo Tuner. Or some vintage mechanical strobe tuner for hipster points!
> Real guitarists use real tuners.
https://smith-kyle.github.io/
But this is cool.
We want to live in hell where any serious illness will completely ruin you.
But in all seriousness, if you are looking for a good guitar tuner, a lot of the ones on the market are actually not very good.
I highly recommend TC Electronic for clip-on tuner, or Sonic Research or Peterson for pedal tuners.
source: playing guitar for 32 years
https://github.com/dsego/strobe-tuner
[ws] Microphone error: DOMException: AudioContext.createMediaStreamSource: Connecting AudioNodes from AudioContexts with different sample-rate is currently not supported.
You can use real pedals over the internet
there's a german blog post about this: https://www.amazona.de/thomann-stompenberg-fx/
Obviously a bit more work. But it'd be pretty neat to have live reactions. "So close!", "Nearly there", "You can do it!", "Perfect" etc.