Disklavier

On Mon, 2 Jun 2003 Aaron Zornes wrote:

> I found my MIDIMAN Tape Recorder Interface unti and manual in my
> garage last week.
>
> Care to test it out for Disklavier use?
>
> I know a number of us woudl love to get our floppies onto a CD or
> two instead of the mish-mash of floppie disks we have.


I would be interested in the opportunity to examine the MidiMan
converter (Aaron, I'll contact you via email) but as PianoBench has
stated, the MidiMan/QRS/ConcertMaster format is different from and
inferior to the encoding used by Yamaha.

I'd also like to clarify one point- encoding to this format won't
eliminate having to use a pile of discs. Encoding the MIDI into a CD
audio channel still limits you to the playing time of the CD. That's
around 80 minutes with today's CD-Rs. My point is, with this scheme you
cannot copy *650 MB* of MIDI files onto a single CD, but rather only *80
minutes* of music at a time.

What we really need is for the Disklavier to support reading MIDI and
ESEQ files from data CDROMs with Joliet extended filenames. That would
let you do what you want... put a huge archive of MIDI files on a single
CD.

A competing solenoid player piano system- the Baldwin ConcertMaster,
already DOES have the ability to play from data CDs.  Yamaha might be
holding back on such a feature for technical reasons or concerns about
piracy.

As others have said- currently the best way for Disklavier owners to
manage a large music library is to use a separate laptop computer.

Mark Fontana