Thank you Carol for your concise overview and continued support of this very useful forum.
Sorry for the long response, yet I hope it’s useful.
I’ve been intrigued with the introduction of the CX series of grand pianos since Yamaha’s acquisition of Boosendorfer a few years back. The improvement in the soundboard, strings, hammers, and more are big improvements in the Yamaha line of acoustic pianos. If you haven’t had a chance to play one, try it out… it’s amazing!
While my 17yr old C5 MKIIxg +(DKC-850) has been a wonderful instrument and is played many times a week, it’s starting to show some signs of wear. The 850 unit has trouble reading some CDs (even when the unit is cleaned and the CDs new), it power-cycles often after just a few hours or use (kept in a well ventilated area), and sometimes scrambles songs that played perfectly just the day before.
Because I also enjoy the ability to record and play PRO (XP) files/songs, I’ve set my system up in the “add-on” configuration. However, even the old MKIIxg Pro head-unit is starting to mis-read floppy disks. This is 30yr old technology and shiny silver platters along with 3” floppy diskettes typically only last 15-20 years.
I think that the product team realized this and at the same time saw the future of music distribution through streaming services so popular now. That’s why I refer to the Enspire line as “Pandora Pianos”. I think this is where Yamaha made a miscalculation. Sure it’s fine for iTunes et al. to claim “throw away your old CDs and let us provide you with all the music you would ever need streamed to any device you own.” But we’re dealing with beautifully crafted acoustic pianos that are meant to last generations if well cared for, not the lasted MP3 player or iPhone.
Many of us have invested thousands of dollars and many hours in our extensive pianosoft libraries and if you own a lot of Smart Pianosoft and/or Pianosoft + Audio CDs, you’re SOL for the most part with these new pianos. While you can stream Midi and MP3 files to the Enspire, store some songs on a USB flash drive, and stream to your heart’s content from DK radio, you’re still left with your favorite music unplayable on the new Enspire.
The product team could have anticipated this (given the 10s of thousands of DKs still in the US market alone) and with some firmware and software built a backward compatibility path for current DK owners (not to dissimilar to what the DKC-850 provided). At the same time for owners who might want to upgrade to the CX piano line, they should have made it easy to move our libraries over to the new Enspire.
In speaking with the very helpful and nice tech support staff for the Disklavier line. They are trying to address some of these issues. One gentleman tested a DKC-850 as a front-end (midi into the Enspire unit) and was able to play Pianosoft +Audio and some Smart Pianosoft titles. While this might be a solution for those who already have the 850 and want to move up to the CX piano, it’s kind of a clunky solution. It’s inelegant, means you have to hang another box on an otherwise very streamlined new Enspire piano, and you still don’t get full stereo when playing back those CDs/combos. In addition you’re now using two different controller apps to run the 850 and the Enspire.
I believe that the 800 pound elephant in the room at DK product management is the dreaded DRM issue. I bet the legal staff is very concerned about digital rights management of all of the titles currently for sale or download from the Yamahamusicsoft store and converting over even one album at time to streaming requires a lot of work with artists, agents, publishers, and more. I’m guessing that the legal team isn’t too keen on Yam employees telling current or potential customers to just go ahead and convert all of your CDs (rip), floppies, and purchased midi files to a new format (.wav or .mp3) that you can put on your home server/NAS/USB hard drive or whatever is most convenient for customer to get their libraries to play on the Enspire. Thus streaming is an easy out and might actually appeal to Millennials who have never used a CD (except perhaps as a coffee coaster), sadly it leaves many loyal DK owners back in the past.
I wonder how inspiring the sales of the Enspire line have been this last 8 months for Yamaha. Are they missing an important revenue and customer loyalty opportunity?
Please take a moment and fill out the cool online survey Azornes has put together and posted here to give useful feedback to the Yamaha Disklavier team, won’t you?
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/disklavier/conversations/messages/12903
KC