Not really, he isn’t accounting for variation in skill level in his anecdote. If this piano tuner is just average for his profession, which seems likely, then the piano is still out of tune to the top 20% of discerning musicians, aficionados and expert piano tuners. The problem is there’s only a very small amount of that skill to go around so the majority of concert hall pianos are going to stay imperfectly tuned. The bigger problem is with the author’s assertion that a robotic piano tuner must necessarily be worse than a human. Maybe the currently available electronic tuners are but that they remain so isn’t a given, it’s more likely that they could be better but it would simply cost too much to achieve that level of performance at the moment. With sufficiently cheap electronics and intelligence it may eventually be possible to sell an automatic piano tuner to every piano owner that far exceeds any human’s ability. Is that not a valid way to achieve perfection?
> the majority of concert hall pianos are going to stay imperfectly tuned.
Any "important" concert hall will tune the piano before each concert. If there is no concert for months the piano will sit untuned (but still be practiced on), but a piano tuner is cheap insurance that nothing happened. If there are two concerts on the same day they might or might not tune between them.
Of course there are a lot of "small-town" concert halls where the piano is not tuned as often. Your local high school probably isn't tuning the piano before the concert - even though the piano is moved from the choir room to the stage before the concert which is the most likely way to mess up tuning.
