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Yes, Pianometer is great. However doing a full tuning with any of these devices is probably a bad idea if you are using the services of a piano tuner. This is because your tuner, and each device you use, will make different decisions and produce a different tuning curve. That means that you are making widespread changes your tuner will have to 'correct' to bring it back to his methods results and that is likely to be more work for him/her than if you did nothing, for which you may not be thanked. It's probably best to do no more than touch up the odd unison or individual note between tunings (if you are employing a tuner) so that the piano can reach a state of stability.

One day I hope to find a good local piano tuner who is also happy to use Pianometer, or similar, so we can both work towards the same goal with me just doing intermediate tunings as necessary but most tuners here work aurally.

Exactly. But it’s not MY piano.

Thanks all for great advices and the congrats. We like the piano very much, here is a short recording of my son's practicing. I used an external USB condenser mic ($30) and audacity to record it, the background noise is from the dehumidifier not the mic. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UXg7EgQvJTEEClZLU7WuQP6s3MSC6P1u/view?usp=sharing).

I won't worry too much about the relationship with the dealer or the piano technician. I think we will focusing on making the piano perform well and whatever happened has happened. The piano is more than 5 years old, and it is not the condition right out of the factory anyway. So I think we will just tell the piano tech the problems we noticed and what we want and let him figure out everything. The dealer admit that they should have done the prep before delivery. But we bought it in a BSO sales event, when all the pianos were hauled from dealership to BSO and was on sale there for some time. We bought it on the last day of the event, so they have to leave the next day and they don't have time to do the prep and they didn't want to move the piano back to their dealership and then move to my place.

It’s a good idea to let the tech know that you’ve tuned the piano yourself, so s/he can make a more accurate assessment of how the piano is settling in. I had a piano that the owner claimed unstable. It’s turned out it was a combination of unstable room humidity level and the diy tuning job that was actually counter productive in achieving the stability within the normal range. Not all techs are against diy jobs as long as the owner is using a proper tool and the technique.

Thanks all! The piano technician came and tuned the piano and did the regulation and voicing. We showed him a list about notes we think whose sound was off and he said he can hear those problems too. We told him we play classical music mostly and it is a little hard to play soft, that's pretty much all he needs. Here is a recording of the piano a few weeks after the tuning, (the sound is loud, please use small volume). Any comments are welcome. I put a mic about 11 inches above the strings and also a phone 2 ft to the right side of the piano to record the piano. I found the phone's sound is better than the mic's, could anyone explain why? (The mic is a 30 dollar condenser USB mic for video conference.)

phone: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xxIK52ngjocguG7TymcljRsc-o6sz4Dg/view?usp=sharing
mic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15sQSqQzGr0KpZgsSlT48H6CvHuqp3Jpv/view?usp=sharing

Your mic recording sounded the way it did due to being close to the strings and perhaps being a budget usb mic. Try experimenting with mic placement - a foot away from the rim, 2 feet, 5 feet etc. Have someone play the piano while you walk around with mic, listening with headphones, if possible. Mic placement takes some experimentation since pianos and room acoustics vary.

If you choose to upgrade your mics, consider getting two so you can record in stereo.

yonion,

I did a side-by side comparison of DIY focused microphone and camcorder options, placed in the same spot, with a player piano playing the same material, over and over. This is not the entire presentation, just the raw footage uploaded to YT (and one of the mics was obviously defective). I am not surprised that a $30 mic is going to sound no better than a smartphone, although finding the best possible placement usually trumps cost.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpbVB3_I0aqRoCAn8B5rYF09nJJ0IFJSa

Also, I wrote a Piano Buyer review a while back that focused on audio recorders of a particular price range. Certain ones of these can be fed to a camcorder via a "line out" jack for video without having to edit...so long as you can configure the camcorder to set a manual level for the line in, and defeat the "automatic level control" or whatever is used to compress the camcorder audio signal.

https://www.pianobuyer.com/article/portable-audio-recorders-149-199a-comparison-test/

As a technician, I disagree. When I go to tune or service a piano, I could care less about the customer's opinion of tuning pin torque or where the tuning was.
I'm the professional, not the piano customer. And in my experience, low tuning pin torque in new pianos is extremely rare. If anything, most of the new pianos I tune have very high torque pins. It's no different than giving advice to your lawyer or doctor, or telling the pilot how to fly the plane.
Any decent technician can tune the piano, recognize obvious faults like double-striking, or other issues.

Any chance you can do a piece on budget recording options using available low cost audio interfaces and budget quality mics? There seems to be a ton of options out there for those who want to record beyond using Zoom mics. I have an H1n and I’m starting to dabble in recording with better equipment now but I’m cheap so always looking for high quality sound for less. My current set-up is a pair of Behrenger B-5’s ($69 each), a U-control Behrenger audio interface ($49) to my 2012 Mac Book Pro, and I had an old Samson 4 channel mixer laying around that I bought in 2005. B5 has cardioid and Omni capsules the latter of which I found useless in my noisy room. I think cardioids in an xy pattern close mic’d is my only option to do my Shigeru justice in my home. Plan to record with simple QuickTime software to point and click some recordings. A write-up on how to record a grand would be a nice feature in piano buyer.

I guess it may depend on the situation of the piano. In our case, the piano is pretty much new. Once the technician knows what we want, he just did his work just like you said. I guess if the piano is 100 years old with many works done on it or rebuilt, the tuner may benefit from knowing the history of the piano.

That's a good suggestion. The organizer of an online recital we are attending recommended a few USB mics for the computer:

Under $100: Fifine USB Microphone, Yeti Snowball
$100-$200: Blue Yeti, Audio Technica
$200 +: Rode NT-USB + Headphone Bundle

I don't like the mics that need XLR cables and external amps, just seems too much cables and electronic boxes for a casual recording.

This is very helpful. I feel the Shure MV88 is the best, the second is the Oktava MK012 omni, the third place is Zoom h2n. But they seems very expensive for the recording quality except for the Shure one. Those XLR mics and external amps may still be the best way for recording.

I'm also interested in recording my playing. Tried Zoom, next I will buy a pair of affordable microphones (Line Audio CM4). I have a small Behringer mixer and USB interface already.

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