Disklavier

James,

Hopefully someone else can also chime in on this because they may 
have a different experience.  I have a M4 Pro and never owned just 
the M4 so my only real experience with the plain M4 is at my local 
piano store.  First of all, the difference between the units is 128 
increments of velocity for a regular M4 and 1024 for the Pro.    

What I would say is under normal listening conditions there's 
practically no difference.  The ability for our ears to discern the 
difference between 128 and 1024 steps is probably minimal.  It's 
there and you might be able to hear it if you're comparing side by 
side, but it might not make any practical difference.  I think the 
analogy is with high fidelity music where most people might be able 
to discern the difference, but it might not matter at all to their 
listening enjoyment.  

One of the big issues here is that there isn't a lot of content 
available for the pro models.  Outside of the E-Competition files, I 
don't think there's any source of material unless you have a pro 
model and record your own.  Oh, great!  It records the nuisances of 
my keystroke mistakes with 1024 step accuracy! ;-)

But having said that, here's where I've found it to be really 
valuable: when playing a song softly which I do with regularity.  
Because of the loudness of the piano, I usually play at 30-39 - no 
where near 100 which I find so incredibly loud as to not be enjoyable 
if I'm right next to it.  Although perfectly fine if I'm in my 
neighbor's house! ;-) So the extra degradations make a lot of 
difference when the 128 steps get mapped into the 1024.   

Here's what I think is happening and someone please correct this if I 
don't have something right or if this is just plain wrong.  Let's 
take a song that has the entire dynamic range of the 128 increments 
of velocity.  (Many if not most pieces will not utilize the entire 
range.) Playing the song at 100% volume gives you that 128 
increments.  Playing it at 50% means every note is only hit at half 
the velocity which means the piano now only has 64 increments for the 
performance.  Play it at 33% and you're down to about 43.  (Again, 
that's the best case scenario because the piano player probably 
wasn't hitting the keys at their absolute hardest on the loudest 
sections so you might be down to very few incremental steps.) That is 
going to be noticeable and I believe they don't recommend playing a 
song really below 39.  With mine I get acceptable performance down to 
25%, and I certainly think a good reason is the Pro version still has 
256 increments to work with when you're at 25%.

By the way, if you're going to be playing the music at a lower 
volume, it is more imperative that the calibration is good.     

Gene 


--- In disklavier@yahoogroups.com, "j109876" <j109876@...> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm new to the group and looking for some advice as to the 
difference 
> between the DC3 M4 and DC3 M4 Pro , in reality is there much 
difference 
> in the performance level?
> Thanks
> 
> James
>