Disklavier

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Carl Youngblood wrote:

> Thanks for the clarification Mark, but I disagree with your last  
> statement:
> 
> > "Achieving 65536 consistently reproducible levels in a reproducing  
> > piano is both mechanically impossible and musically unnecessary."
> 
> I think the feat would definitely be mechanically possible, but your  
> point about how musically necessary it is may be valid.


I'm sticking to the "mechanically impossible" statement, adding the
reasonable assumptions that the piano is not in a vacuum and uses a
standard grand escapement action, which just wasn't designed to achieve
this level of precision.

Yamaha's own admission that they can control the solenoids with 1024
levels but realistically get only around 256 distinguishable levels
already leads one to extrapolate that achieving beyond ten bits of
playback resolution is unlikely... adding more input bits isn't the answer
to overcoming mechanical limitations.

PianoDisc mentioned at the 2006 NAMM show that they have a high-res
playback system in development, and it uses ten bit expression levels.

Wayne Stahnke's Boesendorfer SE system is ten-bit.

Boesendorfer's new CEUS system is ten-bit too.

Ten bits appears to be the practical upper limit for this application.

Regarding the amplitude resolution of human hearing, these links are
interesting (though more casual than scientific):

   http://www.ethanwiner.com/BitsTest.html
   http://www.pcavtech.com/test_data/

Mark Fontana