Disklavier

My prior question has not been completely answered.

Can I set up a computer to provide the same audio features at the DCD-1?

Can a computer MIDI or serial provide the audio from a Piano Soft Plus 
CD to the Disklavier as the DCD-1 will? I suspect that MIDI will only 
provide data to the MIDI tone generator, not the audio that the DCD-1 
will provide.

If the MIDI will not supply the audio tracks to a Mark II XG, then, with 
a computer, can you use the computer's sound processor to put out the 
audio from a Piano Soft Plus CD to speakers connected directly to the 
computer?

                                                       /  MIDI 
data----MIDI interface---- DKV player system
Computer w/ PianoSoft Plus CD <
                                                       \  Audio 
data----sound card--------speakers

It appears that this would require the computer to read both the MIDI 
data and audio data from the PianoSoft Plus CD and send the MIDI to the 
Disklavier  MIDI ports and the audio to the computer's sound card.


btw; you can buy a PCI Serial card for a desktop system for about 
$35.00. Not as cheap as the USB to MIDI cable but some may have all of 
the USB ports in use.



George F. Litterst wrote:
>
> Good morning, everyone.
>
> On Dec 27, 2008, at 12:12 AM, Mark wrote:
>
> > Carol or anybody,
> >
> > Is there a difference is using the MIDI ports versus the Serial port
> > on
> > a Mark II XG? I have been considering trying to use a PC or such to
> > allow the CD with all of its functions. It would appear to me that the
> > MIDI ports would just allow the MIDI information where the serial port
> > would allow other information. Or would the serial port be to slow to
> > access the audio/vocal information.
> >
>
> In my experience, MIDI seems to function the same using the serial
> port as it does using the MIDI ports. In fact, the Yamaha website
> states, "there is no differencebetween the quality of the MIDI signal
> via the TO HOST port and the MIDI IN/OUT ports."
>
> The big difference is that using the MIDI ports requires a MIDI
> interface and using the serial port requires a computer that has a
> serial port as well as the appropriate driver to make the serial port
> work.
>
> Getting the serial port to work on a modern Mac which natively does
> not have serial ports is next to impossible (with one exception that
> I'll mention in a moment). Pre-OS X Macintoshes do have serial ports,
> but configuring and using OMS or FreeMIDI as the necessary MIDI driver
> is a pain. However, unlike modern OS X Macs, you can actually get
> iTunes to output MIDI data to the serial port under OS 9 using OMS or
> FreeMIDI. This means that you can use iTunes as your librarian
> program. The reason is that QuickTime in OS 9 enables you to select
> OMS or FreeMIDI as the output for QuickTime MIDI data.
>
> Using the serial port with a Windows computer requires a computer that
> has a serial port, of course. And, you need to install the Yamaha CBX
> serial driver which you can get here:
>
> http://www.global.yamaha.com/download/cbx_midi/index.html 
> <http://www.global.yamaha.com/download/cbx_midi/index.html>
>
> Apparently this CBX driver supports Windows 95 through XP.
>
> You can use the serial port with any modern Macintosh or Windows
> computer if you use a Yamaha MIDI interface that also has a serial
> port, such as the UX-96. Sometimes I do this so that I can have two
> different computers plugged into my Disklavier, one using he serial
> port and one using the MIDI ports. All I have to do is to move the To
> Host switch on the back of the control unit to the correct position in
> order to switch the active input.
>
> NOTE: Using the serial port does not provide any additional
> communication between the computer and the control unit other than
> MIDI data. The Disklavier Pro 2000 (of which there were fewer than 10
> manufactured) did have a special version of the firmware for the
> control unit that enabled additional communication using the serial
> port and a special software program running in Windows 98. However,
> that is not available for other models.
>
> Regards,
> PianoBench
>
>