440 Hz or 432 Hz?

What the two tunings actually are, what is true and untrue about the history and the health claims, and why I recommend 440 for learners.

This is the spec where the marketing is thickest, so let me be direct about what is true, what is false, and what actually affects your decision.

My recommendation: buy A=440 unless you have a specific reason not to.

What the numbers mean#

A concert pitch reference fixes one note, and every other note follows from it. A=440 Hz means the A above middle C vibrates 440 times a second.

A=432 Hz is about 32 cents lower — roughly a third of a semitone. For scale: a cent is a hundredth of a semitone, most listeners can detect a difference of about 5 to 10 cents on a sustained tone, 20 cents is clearly audible, and 50 cents is a quarter tone. So 32 cents is a real, noticeable difference, but it is much smaller than a semitone.

What is true about the history#

440 is a convention that won, not a discovery. Before the twentieth century concert pitch varied enormously — from around A=376 Hz on a French organ of 1700 to about A=507 Hz at Halberstadt in 1361. France legislated A=435 in 1859, partly because singers complained about pitch inflation. A=440 was recommended at an international conference in London in 1939 and confirmed by the ISO in 1955.

432 has two separate origin stories, and both are messier than they are usually told. Joseph Sauveur’s “scientific pitch” around 1700 fixed middle C at exactly 256 Hz for mathematical tidiness, which puts A at about 430.5 Hz — not 432. Separately, Verdi campaigned for standardisation in Italy. He actually advocated matching France at 435; when the Italian government’s commission proposed 432 for mathematical convenience, he accepted it, calling the difference almost imperceptible. Italy decreed 432 in 1884.

So “Verdi tuning” is a real historical episode. But Verdi’s own preference was 435, and he treated the difference as trivial.

What is not true#

The frequently repeated link to the Schumann resonance does not survive checking. That resonance is about 7.83 Hz and has no clean arithmetic relationship to 432.

There is no peer-reviewed evidence that 432 Hz has therapeutic properties that other tunings lack. Not that it does nothing — music does a great deal for people — but that no property has been demonstrated for 432 specifically that neighbouring tunings do not share.

The reason that actually matters#

Here is the practical consequence, and it is permanent:

A handpan cannot be retuned to a different reference pitch. It is not like a guitar. If you buy an instrument at A=432, you have bought a different instrument, for good.

An A=432 handpan will not play in tune with:

  • Any recording, backing track or drone you find online
  • Any tutorial video, including every lesson on this site
  • A piano, a guitar, or any other musician who has not specifically retuned
  • Another handpan at 440, including your own second instrument later

That is the whole argument. It is not about which sounds better. It is about whether your instrument can join in.

For a learner especially, this is decisive. You will want to play along with things. You will want a drone under your practice. You will want to sit in with a friend. At 440, all of that just works.

Two more practical notes#

Price. Some makers charge a small premium for 432 because it is less common. Many charge the same. If someone charges a large premium and explains it with frequency claims, that tells you something about the seller.

Resale. 440 instruments sell faster and to more people. A 432 instrument in an unusual scale is a slow sale.

When 432 is the right choice#

Genuinely, there are cases:

  • You already own a 432 instrument and want a matching second one.
  • You work in sound therapy or meditation settings where clients or colleagues have settled on 432, and playing with them matters more than playing with recordings.
  • You have listened to both properly, side by side, on the same maker’s instruments, and you simply prefer it — knowing exactly what you are trading away.

That last one is the honest version, and it is fine.

A footnote for the curious#

Almost every handpan is built in twelve-tone equal temperament, with each note’s fundamental placed at its standard frequency. But within each note, the tuner aims at pure ratios: the octave partial exactly twice the fundamental, the compound fifth exactly three times it.

So a handpan is equal tempered horizontally and justly intoned vertically, at the same time. That is part of why it sounds subtly more consonant than the same notes on a piano: play a fifth, and the compound fifth partial of the lower note lands very close to a partial of the upper note, and they lock.

PANArt eventually abandoned an external reference altogether — from 2010 the Free Integral Hang was freed from the 440 standard and each instrument was attuned to itself. A lovely idea, and completely impractical for a beginner who wants to play along with things.

Next#

Specs done. Now the part where people actually lose money.