On 12/16/2014 7:21 PM,
PianoBench@... [disklavier] wrote:
Good evening, again.
Thanks for the additional detail, Scott and Sam, as well for the text of the earlier post.
Zenph Sound Innovations is out of business and Internet MIDI is now back in the hands of the original developers at TimeWarp Technologies.
Network-MIDI and MIDIRPT are quite remarkable but are engineered for local area networks. There are quite a number of things that Internet MIDI does that Network-MIDI and MIDIRPT do not do:
—Option to connect over the Internet by buddy name as opposed to IP addresses
—Adjustable buffering so that you can coordinate the MIDI playback with incoming video from a program like Skype
—Alternatively, automatic buffering that adjusts to the changing latency conditions on the Internet
—Correct performance of data packets that are received out of time
—Graceful and accurate playback despite dropped data packets
—Automatic and manual control over the Skype microphone and camera(s)
Of course many of the things mentioned in my list are much more of a concern when the connection takes place over the Internet. Local area networks are much more stable, especially if they are wired.
Internet MIDI also has a unique feature of being able to work effectively and accurately with Disklavier grand pianos that are set to real-time MIDI input. Normally, real-time MIDI input with a Disklavier is a bad idea because notes with high note-on velocities (i.e. loud notes) are played sooner than soft notes. In addition, when notes are rapidly repeated, note-off messages come in so quickly following the note-on messages that the physical keystrokes of the instrument gets interrupted and playback stumbles.
For those reasons, the Disklavier is normally set to a 500 ms MID input buffer which gives the instrument time to analyze the incoming MIDI data and adjust the playback timing of the notes appropriately.
Internet MIDI is capable of doing the same thing but uses just a 250 ms buffer for this purpose. This is important if you are trying to coordinate playback with Skype or another video conferencing program. With a 500 ms delay buffer, Disklavier playback will always be late compared to the incoming Skype video.
Regards,George
On Dec 16, 2014, at 10:10 PM, Skanter123 skanter123@... [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Scott, thanks for re-posting the report on our experiment. As George has mentioned, the Internet MIDI program is now owned by Time Warp, not Zenph. If I'm incorrect George can fill in the details. It was a year ago, and lots of fun!
SamHi again!
As Sam has already reported, the successful connection of our Disklaviers over the internet was via Internet MIDI. A previous test, using only MIDIRPT required too much fiddling with the router settings, and was thus deemed to be unsuitable for the casual user.
The original post can be found at message:10782Re: Remote DKL lessons
That message was originally posted on Jan 26, 2014.
Sorry, I wasn't to make a link to that posting, but it's easy to find using the search feature at the Yahoo Groups webpage for Disklavier. But, for the convenience of our dear members, I have copied the text below this message
< /div>Cheers!!
Scott
**************** Begin Copied Text *******************
My fellow DKV enthusiasts,
As noted by Sam earlier, he and I spent some time trying to connect our DKVs over the internet. Here's a run-down of our experiences:
1) We first tried to connect using MIDI over the Real Time Protocol (RTPMidi) over the internet. Built into OSX on the Mac is a Network widget, which implements the protocol. You can get free software written by Tobias Erichsen which runs on Windows and implements the same protocol at the following address:
Given that this software is built into the Mac, and free for Windows, it seemed like a good starting point. Sam and I configured to software, cabled up our computers to the DKVs using MIDI cables, and tried to connect over the internet.
We ran into a snag here, because as some of you may know the routers at our respective homes try to provide a basic level of security by blocking intrusion of some internet traffic. In our case, the routers rejected to RTPMidi traffic. For those who wish to pursue this route of connection, it would be necessary to map a couple of ports on your router to be forwarded to the computer running the RPTMidi software, and then you could get this working; details for the basic approach can be found on T obias' site in the tutorial for his software (requires forwarding two successive ports). But that's probably beyond what could be expected of many folks, and as Sam was interested in a solution that just about anyone could use, we began to seek an alternative.
As had been pointed out in this group earlier, Zenph sells a software package that provides for connection of Midi devices over the internet, and you can download a Demo version to try it out. Here's the link:
The Demo has full functionality, but is limited to running for 15 mins at a time, and you can only run it 29 times total. We both download ed the demo (I got the Mac version, he got the Windows version). About the only setup we had to do was to enable connections from the internet via a checkbox. Then I entered his public IP address into a dialog box, hit a 'Connect' button, and voila! we were able to play each other's Disklavier! It was a very exciting moment for us both!
There was one potential glitch that we ran across: It seems that my MX100B was designed so that it *always* does a Midi Thru function, and I couldn't find any way to turn this off. Sam's later model (I think he has a Mark II) has a setting for enabling Midi Thru. At any rate, since my MX100B always does Midi Thru, when Sam would send Midi to play my DKV, then the data would be replicated via Midi Thru, and resent back to him. The result was that, after a slight delay, his piano would also play back the same no tes he had sent to my piano. So this little problem was a bit of a nuisance, but only slightly diminished our enjoyment.
As it turns out, there are selectable buttons on the Zenph Internet Midi which enable you to disable either the incoming or the outgoing Midi messages, and by temporarily turning off my outgoing Midi messages I was able to make it so that Sam could play my DKV from his without the notes being echoed back to him after a delay.
I think that our little experiment was a lot of fun, and encourage anyone else who is interested to try it out. Sam is considering whether it would make a useful tool for piano instruction with remote users (would of course work with any Midi keyboard, not just the DKV). Feel free to direct any questions you may have to either Sam or me.
-- Best regards, Spencer Chase 67550-Bell Springs Rd. Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only. Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only. Spencer@... http://www.spencerserolls.com (425) 791-0309