Disklavier

On Sat, 7 May 2005, Bob Coate wrote:

> Does anyone know why the Mark III Disklavier will play the piano part
> on some PianoDisc CDs (www.pianodisc.com), but not others? ...
>
> Is there any solution to make these discs play?  A setting that can
> be changed, or some way of extracting and converting the piano music
> data? ...
>
> I realize of course that these discs are not really intended for
> playback on the Yamaha pianos, but was just wondering if anyone had
> discovered the secrets to making them work.


It is no accident that the Disklavier can play PianoDisc CDs... these
discs have a completely different format than Yamaha's, and Yamaha
deliberately added support for QRS and PianoDisc formats.

My experience is that the Disklavier is a little less forgiving about
the PianoDisc format than native PianoDisc hardware is. The PianoDisc
CDs appear to be mastered using an analog phase, so the amplitude and
equalization of the control signal sometimes varies a bit, possibly
confusing the Disklavier.

Make sure your Mark III has the latest firmware installed. I am told
that a previous firmware update addressed some issues with PianoDisc
compatibility.

Even with the update, however, one problem remains- PianoDisc has
released discs using two slightly different formats (they differ only by
a minor technical change), and I have confirmed that Yamaha supports
only the older variant of PianoDisc CDs and not the newer one.

In any case, I've heard the folks at http://www.invisitouch.com are able
to convert either type of PianoDisc CD to Disklavier format for a fee.
The output would be a native Disklavier CD.

Mark Fontana