Disklavier

I thought the membership might be interested in reading about my 
experiences with the recently-released "upgrade" for the Mark III 
Disklaviers.  This is a text copy of an email I sent to Mark Wisner 
at Yamaha:


Hi Mark!
 
I thought you might be interested in the first impressions of an 
early "end-user" of Disklavier's new "smart"
feature.  I just 
received the software update and have purchased about a ½ dozen
pairs 
of Yamaha's new "SPS" diskettes and accompanying CDs.

(1)     Using the disk supplied from Yamaha, the flash update 
completed without a hitch.  Hopefully, this update won't mess up
any 
of the other Disklavier features, including the ability to 
automatically sense and play SMFs, Pianomation/QRS CDs, and PianoDisc 
CDs.  So far… so good, but I have not yet been able to test
everything

(2)     Although the new PianoSmart manual Yamaha sent me is a little 
confusing (and it reads like someone in Japan translated from 
Japanese, rather than starting with good idiomatic English), the 
feature is VERY easy/simple to use (probably "idiot-proof")
and works 
exactly as advertised

(3)     I haven't yet tried recording my own piano accompaniment
to 
some other commercial CDs (my piano abilities aren't nearly good 
enough – I'll have to wait for our son, who is talented
enough, to 
come home from law school to try that feature)

(4)     I wondered how Yamaha was going to deal with the potential 
problem that the piano might be tuned a little sharp or flat off 
perfect pitch and thus not match the CD music of each pre-recorded 
CD.  As usual, however, I see that they already thought of that.  
Although it's not documented in the new manual, I discovered that
the 
Disklavier's built-in digital signal processor is smart enough to 
allow one actually manually to "tune" the pitch of the
playing CD up 
or down to match the piano!!  This undocumented feature really does 
work!  QUITE IMPRESSIVE, if I must say so myself!

(5)     When reading about the new PianoSmart feature several months 
ago, I questioned whether it would really add all that much to the 
piano.  Having sample-played most of the new special music software 
purchases, however, I have to say that I was wrong.  We LOVE this, 
and this feature adds significant value to the piano and enjoyment to 
the music.  Listening to these CDs with the (additional) live piano 
does really make a difference compared to playing just the CDs alone, 
which now sound a little "sterile".  Now…..all Yamaha has
to do is 
figure out a way to teach the Disklavier's DSP to "digitally
remove" 
any piano from an existing pre-recorded analog music CD and convert 
that to midi, so the Disklavier will automatically play along with 
any pre-recorded music CD that might already have a piano.  Now THAT 
would REALLY be impressive!  When is that coming?!?

Hope this finds you well, Mark.  Thanks again for all your past help.

Dr. Rick Taylor