Disklavier

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Dan O'Connor wrote:
> If you are a computer kind of person nothing that Yamaha does will ever
> satisfy.  But the fact that they have built in a midi in and out is all I
> need to enjoy almost every feature that is resident on the newest model.
> (And if I should ever see the value of a DCD1 then I would be as close to
> full featured as the Mark IV).  But I think that it is safe to say not
> everyone is a computer person, thus a proprietary system is very useful and
> necessary for these folks.

To a degree, yes. You are limited by the low bandwidth of midi though, so 
passages with a lot of fast runs and block chords may not have all the 
notes sounding at the correct times, especially if you are also sending 
synthesiser backing parts along too. The MarkIV is also substantially more 
accurate and uses high precision messages - these congest the midi stream 
even more. This makes it more of an issue to get things right in the 
control unit.

The MarkIV control unit is a fully fledged computer running Linux, hence 
the suggestion of open-sourcing the software. I don't seeing Yamaha doing 
that, certainly not under the GPL (or similar), because it would open the 
gateway to competitors getting a free ride on user interface and media 
playback capabilities. It would also allow me, a Mark II XG owner, to 
build a small PC with the Yamaha software running to give me all of the 
Mark IV facilities for very little outlay. Yamaha don't give the DSR1 away 
free to MarkI owners.

IMO fixing the "flaws" with the hardware (eg wifi) and creating a 
sophisticated plugin system would be great. Being able to write software 
to control the disklavier and run within the PDA / tablet can only be a 
good thing. Imagine the practice tools you could build with that kind of 
system!


Regards

James