Disklavier

I’ve been doing this with great pleasure: using a dedicated laptop for storage of MIDI files, but also for using Band-in-a-Box, which is awesome connected to DKV, GNMIDI, van Basco’s etc. But what has been bothering me is the lack of timing and “accuratesse” of playing midi files through a usb-midi connect compared to the same song played directly from internal memory.

This has been discussed and explained in this forum and can IMHO only dealt with when it comes to an upgrade with bigger internal memory.

So please friends from YAMAHA think it over and reconsider the promises you made to most of us!

Dirk Veldhorst

Van: disklavier@yahoogroups.com [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com]Namens Carol Beigel
Verzonden: zaterdag 12 april 2008 17:49
Aan: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Onderwerp: Re: [disklavier] Re: upgrade path

Actually, you could do this with a laptop connected to your DKV and use playlist software, which is cheap or free. What you are out of is storage space, not memory to run the software that actually plays the DKV. I highly recommend the Yamaha USB MIDI interface because it is small and comes with the MIDI cables already attached. You could even use one of those external disk drives to store your music files. I think mine cost about $100 and it has 500 gig storage.

Now I am not that good in math so there may be errors, but my calculations are as follows: say an average song is 100 kb, then that equals 10 songs per mg. That is 10,000 songs per GB, or 5 million songs on a 500 GB external drive. That is roughly 20 million minutes of music or 333,333 hours, or 13,888 days or about 38 years of continuous music. I doubt I would live long enough to hear that library!

Carol Beigel

----- Original Message -----

From: Aaron Zornes

To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 11:22 PM

Subject: RE: [disklavier] Re: upgrade path

Actually, I am out of memory at 16MB and was hoping we could get into the hundreds of MBs!

We have a huge collection of MIDIs, Yamaha and others.

We like having some of our most common collections (copied from multiple FDs, etc.) in groups as Pop, Quiet Dinner, Children’s, Dinner, etc.

Thanks for the info!

--Aaron in SF

From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Carol Beigel
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 12:54 PM
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [disklavier] Re: upgrade path

If you have a MarkIII, you have enough memory to run anything. To use PianoSmart, you need to install the free software on the Yamaha website for your model DKV. I think the lastest is v4.47 or 4.48. Anything over v4.45 will do for a MarkIII.

Here is how I think PianoSmart works with regular CDs. There is a beginning mark on each song on any CD. The floppy disk you buy from Yamaha to play in your Disklavier along with the CD probably has a MIDI time code or something that marks the beginning of each song. That is why you must use a specific CD. When you put the CD in the player, and the floppy disk in the floppy drive, they synchronize so they play together.

Didn't Spencer or Mark Fontana write a software program that will work on a PC that does this? I believe you can make your own CDs with the MIDI embedded that you can play off a laptop and not even need a DCD1. If so, then you have almost all the capabilities of the MarkIV!

The other totally cool thing that PianoSmart does on a MarkIII, but not on an upgrade from an earlier Disklavier, is transposable audio. I hear this most on my Fiddler on the Roof Pianosmart CD/floppy set. These people on the original soundtrack are not singing in tune to A440. Therefore their voices are not matched to my MarkIIXG tuned to A440. However, on a MarkIII, it will read that their pitch is different, and automatically adjust the voices and orchestra to A440.

May we all be gratefull we have Disklaviers, and not.....

Carol Beigel

----- Original Message -----

From: Aaron Zornes

To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 1:11 PM

Subject: RE: [disklavier] Re: upgrade path

Our Mark III already has 16MB memory. Is there an upgrade kit that goes beyond that?

A quick web search only found this upgrade snippet:

NAMM 2000: The Disklavier's 1.44MB memory chip is now upgradeable to 16MB.

Thanks!

--Aaron

From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com[mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf OfGeorge F. Litterst
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 7:02 AM
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [disklavier] Re: upgrade path

Good morning, everyone.

On Apr 11, 2008, at 4:05 AM, athomik wrote:

The only upgrades ever released for Disklaviers themselves, which added extra functionality, were a memory upgrade kit for theMark 3 (?), and a Smart key update. All other software updates were only intended to remove software bugs.

Actually, there have been a number of feature enhancements over the years, including the addition of MIDI Time Code (which makes video-sync recording possible) to Disklaviers whose control units had enough additional memory and support for Type 0 Standard MIDI files in the Mark II.

;

Regards,

PianoBench

=

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