Disklavier

John,

Thanks for giving us an informative report on the new Mark IV disklavier 
grand pianos.  These are all welcome developments, especially the 
addition of a HD and the improvements in the hammer sensors.  I will be 
interested to hear if you had any opportunity to sit down at a Mark IV 
and record a selection on it.  If so, how did you feel it's playback 
accuracy compared with your Pro disklavier? 

Thanks again for the report.

Tom

jqw2 wrote:

>At the NAMM Convention here in Anaheim, CA today, Yamaha showed 
>prototypes of its new Disklavier "Mark IV" pianos (called
>"D4" in the signs we saw).  Yamaha's Service Manager,
>Bill Brandom, walked us through the technical details, and crawled 
>under the new grands with us.  Since I didn't see a press release
>on Yamaha's Web site, I thought I'd report briefly what we
>saw. I'm sure Yamaha will supply extensive details soon (and
>correct any mistakes I've made here).
>
>Hard drive and I/O: I've been pretty vocal on this forum about
>the fact that 1.44M is just too small for recording extended recitals 
>on Pros in high-resolution.  Blessedly, the D4 control unit has an 
>80GB hard drive!  In addition, there's a new USB port and LAN
>connection for getting files in and out.  The control unit will be 
>running the Linux operating system.
>
>User interface: The user interface to the D4 control unit is a color 
>PDA that can sit in a cradle.  It communicates with the main control 
>unit via wireless Wi-Fi.  There is a small unit that sits under the 
>front of the grand's keyboard, housing the CD drive and diskette 
>drive, but it has just a few buttons on it - unlike the many
>buttons on the Mark III control unit.  It has a nice black cover that 
>you can close when it's not in use.  The main guts (with the hard 
>drive) sit much farther back under the soundboard.
>
>Hammer measurements: The hammer sensors have been improved in an 
>amazing way.  If you look at how hammer velocity and angles are 
>measured on a Mark III, you'll see a little metal "U." 
>The new hammer sensor is a tiny piece of clear film that has a gray-
>scale curve on it (kinda hard to describe).  As the hammer moves up, 
>the sensors can measure the continuous movement through the gray-
>scale, from clear to dark.  Look for the potential for way more 
>recording accuracy.  Bill showed us the continuous hammer measurement 
>on some internal-use software ("MIDI Check").
>
>Pedal: In addition, there's been at least one more bit of
>accuracy added for the pedals (from 7 bits to 8 bits).  I guess that 
>means each pedal movement may result in 2 MIDI events, instead of 
>one.  Visually, the black unit that holds the pedal pistons on the D4 
>grands is much smaller than that in the Mark III.
>
>These were prototype grands; the real D4s will ship "in
>summer."  These improvements show a tremendous commitment by
>Yamaha's engineering team to iterative refinement of an already-
>excellent system.  Our software company, Zenph Studios, writes 
>software for Disklavier Pros - we're delighted to see the
>ongoing improvements.  Welcome to the 21st century!
>
>- John Q.
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