Dear All: In my opinion, almost every request or challenge that people seem to have with the Disklavier can be solved by moving to the PC environment. There is no real flaw in the design in my view. Not everyone is PC literate so Yamaha tries to build the best stand-alone system they can. If you can move to the PC world everything becomes state of the art. All my files are on the PC, wirelessly connected to the internet, VanBasco for Karaoke, Yamplayer (thank you Dan C. ) for musicsoft, Cakewalk for midi, I have no interest in Smart recordings etc. Yamaha has updated mid-90's technology to allow my older wagon model to do almost everything that the Mark IV does with the DSR1 and CD upgrades ( I did not buy the CD player). . Japanese companies don't always have the best marketing, but my 15 year old system works flawlessly, sounds great, holds a tuning, and is more than I could have hoped. With a strong users group I can convert my floppies to computer files, play PianoDisc as well, and have collected some 14 thousand midi files. I would recommend a Yamaha piano and Disklavier to anyone. It works and it works well. Thought I would express a word of support for the hard working folks at Yamaha. Besides can it be too far off before Elton John comes to play in my home? Cheers Dan O'Connor ________________________________ From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tom Wheeler Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 12:14 PM To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com Subject: [disklavier] Re: feedback to Yamaha Ken, Ian and Other Disklavier Owners Who May Respond, Thank you for your expressions of support. Yamaha in the U.S. and Bill Brandom in particular, have always been very supportive of the disklavier product line. The Mark IV is my third disklavier. I first purchased a DC3IIXG (Mark II model), then traded that a few years later for a DC3A (Mark III model), and in November of 2004 I purchased the DC3M4t (Mark IV) model that I now have. As others have expressed, part of my reason for purchasing the Mark IV was the promise that the Mark IV would soon be upgraded with features that it did not have when introduced. I remember being expressly assured in a personal phone from by the National Sales Manager for the disklavier product line (not Bill Brandom, incidentally) that the Mark IV would soon be able to access the internet and download music files. That was in late November 2004 when the Mark IV was introduced! I use virtually every single feature on my Mark IV since I began taking weekly piano lessons when I retired a litle over five years ago, and I have the good fortune of having a wonderful young pianist classically trained in Moscow, Edinburgh, London, and the University of Minnesota who comes each week to my home, gives me a 1-2 hr lesson and records every single one of my assignments on my Mark IV. When version 1.20 came out in late August, I was very pleased to find that overdub recording had been enabled. This allows my teacher to record both parts of duets intended for four hands. I then turn off the primo part and play along with my teacher playing the secundo part. This is a wonderful learning technique. Add to that the ability to set playback to begin from any section of a piece and end at any section and either loop the playback or simply go back to point A and await the start play button to be pressed, and you have some powerful tools for using the Mark IV as a teaching/learning instrument. I love my Mark IV. My frustration with Yamaha Japan is that they are either very slow to listen to customers in their largest market (the U.S.) or don't listen at all and do whatever they please. The potential in the Mark IV for both entertainment and teaching has scarcely begun to be recognized by Yamaha Japan. This is especially difficult to understand and swallow when you look at the very very high cost of the Mark IV instruments. I do continue to recommend the disklavier to fellow students and to teachers with whom I speak from time to time. It is a fantastic teaching instrument and a delightful piano to play and be entertained by. I do, however, also point out that it is a mistake to buy the disklavier in anticipation of future enhancements to the software. Buy it for what it has today, or don't buy it, but don't make your purchase decision on this expensive an instrument based on features that may or may not ever appear. Tom Ken Gorman wrote: Tom, I wish my company's customers were like you in that they are willing to take the time to document issues, suggestions, and needs. You really understand the product and the feedback you give is gold. Here at my company, our employees are mandated to take "Voice of the Customer" training classes and our entire focus is developing products and solutions that address customer's specific needs. Yamaha should value your insight and feedback. Thanks for feeding this back to Yamaha - hopefully your comments will play some role in the advancement of Yamaha's products that we can all enjoy. Regards, Ken Gorman ________________________________ From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com> [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com> ] On Behalf Of Tom Wheeler Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 12:33 PM To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: [disklavier] Re: feedback to yamaha Bill, It is good to see your response to Jason, and I am sure that all of us on this forum appreciate your participation and for your listening and forwarding our ideas to the engineers in Japan who do the programming for the Mark IV. I would like to suggest a few ideas, some of which I have been requesting for over two years now. (1) A search function. The necessity for this is readily appreciated by anyone who has a large number of files on their disklavier and tries to find a particular song or artist. Right now it is impossible to do so. (2) A larger internal HD drive for the Mark IV. Initially an 80 GB internal HD for the Mark IV seems like a lot of drive space, and it is if one is only storing midi files on the HD. However, the Mark IV stores CD's (required for PianoSoft Plus Audio and Smart Piano Yamaha software) as ..wav files. These take up a huge amount of space, and it is easily possible to consume all of the capacity of the Mark IV's 80 GB HD when one begins storing CD's on the internal HD. In fact, I have already done so, and because my internal HD on my Mark IV has very little free space remaining, I no longer purchase Yamaha software since I have no where to store it. Please note that it is NOT possible to use an external USB HD to store any of the Yamaha software that requires CD's due to copy protection issues and thus one has no choice but to use the internal HD of the Mark IV. The Mark IV is modular in construction and replacing the internal HD of the Mark IV with a larger Yamaha approved HD should be possible. I would strongly urge Yamaha to make a larger HD available for the Mark IV. (3) Enable the Yamaha TRC-100 tablet remote to connect wirelessly to the Internet and download files directly to either the Mark IV's internal HD or (if the files are not copy protected) to an external USB HD. It is illogical that we have a fine wirelessly controlled disklavier and absolutely no way to interact with the internet from the Mark IV to download files. This feature is long overdue! (4) Since purchasing the Mark IV, I have found the tablet remote (the TRC-100) to be of little or no use. In fact, the pocket remote (PRC-100) has many capabilities that the larger TRC-100 does not have. I would urge Yamaha to provide software that makes full use of the capabilities of the TRC-100. This would not only include wireless access to the Internet for midi file downloading, but other features as well. One perfect example would be Yamaha's own Digital Music Notebook software. This software, running on the TRC-100 remote, would allow a vast range of teaching/student interactions not now possible on the Mark IV. I am sure there are many other examples of software that could run on the TRC-100 that I am not aware of that others might suggest. I will close by pointing out several of the features I am requesting for the Mark IV are already available on some Yamaha clavinovas which are able to wirelessly download software from the Internet. The Mark IV is a VERY expensive Yamaha instrument. The Mark IV should represent the pinnacle of what Yamaha is able to do with their instruments. Many of us purchased the Mark IV expecting features to be added at regular intervals. While this has occurred to a small extent with the version 1.20 software, I have been disappointed in how slow Yamaha Japan has been to enable features clearly supported by the basic hardware of the Mark IV. I hope that if others share my interest in any of the above features (and others that I have not mentioned) they will add their voice to my own pleas for these features. Tom Wheeler Bill Brandom wrote: Hello Jason, I am responsible for product development for Disklavier in the United States. I am reading everything that goes through this Disklavier group. I welcome any ideas from our customers. I sort through them and then forward them to the appropriate engineers in Japan for their consideration. Please keep your ideas coming! Bill Brandom Senior Technical Manager, Piano Division YAMAHA Corporation of America TEL (800) 854-1569 FAX (714) 522-9301 E-mail: bbrandom@... <mailto:bbrandom@...> Web: http://www.yamaha.com <http://www.yamaha.com> "jfoodman" <jasonht@...> <mailto:jasonht@...> 11/07/2006 3:54:13 PM >>> Here's an idea ... we all presumably love our Disklaviers so I mean this in the spirit of community 'helping guide' (not complaining). But what if we all drafted something that outlined say our Top 10 'wish list' items for the future (and present) and we each sent that list independently to Yamaha - so they hear the same thing from a lot of Disklavier owners? Another way, of course, would be to send a single e-mail but with anyone who wanted to participates name on it. Hopefully if they heard from their loyal owners they might be moved to adapt some of the feedback into the roadmap ... Or, better yet, does anyone know who the Product Manager for Disklavier is at Yamaha, would be great to go right to the source. Regards, Jason --- In disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com> , Carl Youngblood <carl@...> <mailto:carl@...> wrote: Hear! Hear! If anyone from Yamaha is listening, please do everything you can to convince them to open-source the software portion of their systems and expose public APIs whereever it makes sense to do so. It's very common for hardware companies to open-source the drivers for their systems, since they make money off the hardware and not the software, and it promotes goodwill among consumers and increases the value of their product, since they are in essence getting free labor from hordes of hobbyists who have more time and resources to develop the product than they do. Carl Youngblood On Nov 7, 2006, at 12:11 PM, Mark Fontana wrote: Making the Mark IV more of an open system would benefit the user community greatly, especially a decade or two from now when Yamaha may have no desire to continue supporting the product themselves. At that point, the Linux-based control computer will be obsolete, parts for it will be hard to find, the PDA remote will have long since failed, etc. Yet, the solenoid control system and sensor "guts" of the Disklavier may still be perfectly functional, and the piano itself will be fine. I can easily see a third party interfacing a new front-end to those components to keep the system going, but given the complexity of the system, it may be difficult without help from Yamaha. And, with the current flurry of anti-interoperability lawsuits, by the time it becomes necessary to do this work, it may be *illegal* without Yamaha's blessing. Mark Fontana To Post a message to the group, send it to: disklavier@... <mailto:disklavier@YahooGroups.com> To Post a private message to Todd Muncy, the group's founder and moderator, send it to: disklavier-owner@... <mailto:disklavier-owner@...> To reach our group's web site go to: http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier <http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier> Todd's family web site was completely updated 012/22/03. It contains some fun disklavier content and links to midi sites among many other things, The url is: http://MuncyFamily.com <http://MuncyFamily.com> THINKING OF LEAVING THE GROUP? If you are thinking of unsubcribing because you are getting too much mail, go the the web site and change your email delivery option instead. That will fix the problem, while maintaining your access to the group. If you insist on leaving us completely send a blank email to: disklavier-unsubscribe@... <mailto:disklavier-unsubscribe@...> Know someone who wants to join? Have them send a blank email to: disklavier-subscribe@... <mailto:disklavier-subscribe@...> or give them this link: http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier/join <http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier/join> Yahoo! Groups Links To Post a message to the group, send it to: disklavier@... <mailto:disklavier@YahooGroups.com> To Post a private message to Todd Muncy, the group's founder and moderator, send it to: disklavier-owner@... <mailto:disklavier-owner@...> To reach our group's web site go to: http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier <http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier> Todd's family web site was completely updated 012/22/03. It contains some fun disklavier content and links to midi sites among many other things, The url is: http://MuncyFamily.com <http://MuncyFamily.com> THINKING OF LEAVING THE GROUP? If you are thinking of unsubcribing because you are getting too much mail, go the the web site and change your email delivery option instead. That will fix the problem, while maintaining your access to the group. If you insist on leaving us completely send a blank email to: disklavier-unsubscribe@... <mailto:disklavier-unsubscribe@...> Know someone who wants to join? Have them send a blank email to: disklavier-subscribe@... <mailto:disklavier-subscribe@...> or give them this link: http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier/join <http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier/join> Yahoo! Groups Links (Yahoo! ID required) mailto:disklavier-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com> ________________________________ Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=45083/*http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/m ailbeta> ________________________________ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.14.0/525 - Release Date: 11/9/2006 9:45 AM
Message
RE: [disklavier] Re: feedback to Yamaha
2006-11-09 by Dan O'Connor