No evidence supports preferring 432 Hz piano tuning over 440 Hz

Evidence

Another interesting question of sound quality in musical acoustics is put forward by a (militant) group of music lovers in Germany, who maintains that. a grand piano when t.uned to 432 Hz for a4 sounds much better than when tuned to the present standard of 440 Hz. To address this <IllPstion with a Steinway-Welte-Reproduction-Grand of the Deutsches l\Iuseum, music was reproduced and recorded on DAT-tape for both tunings. … The data displayed in Fig. 16.49 do not support the hypothesis that the tuning to 432 Hz would be preferred. On the contrary, if any, a slight preference for 440 Hz - tuning shows up for sounds A, B, D, and E. Thus it is very unlikely that the sound quality of a grand piano could be improved significantly just by tuning it to a lower tuning standard. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2054

Categorization

• SEED: A debunking piece: ‘The 432 Hz myth, tested on a real Steinway’ — a clean myth-busting essay against a popular wellness/musician claim.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ theme of debunking revivalist myths with controlled evidence; also to the broader human love of numerology-based tuning claims. — connects to: No musical tuning system can be proven superior to another; No keyboard tuning can make every key sound justly intonated; No tuning system can make all diatonic scale intervals perfectly consonant — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1306
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2054

Broader Connections

• No musical tuning system can be proven superior to another #corroborates (0.85)
• No keyboard tuning can make every key sound justly intonated #corroborates (0.75)
• No tuning system can make all diatonic scale intervals perfectly consonant #corroborates (0.72) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1306