Disklavier

For Carol, Spencer, Mark, Ian, Kevin and other stalwarts of this great resource:

Having been a Disklavier fan for over 10 years, I realized that moving from an DC5 MKIIxg (with the 850 upgrade) to an Enspire piano might cause some potential conversion issues with Pianosoft media (smart pianosoft in particular). This is because Yamaha wants only Stereo output on their new Disklavier pianos. Yet I never thought that Yamaha would make the decision to stop supporting their own native file format (.FIL) on these pianos (they support Mid, Wav, Mp3). So now I have a wonderful new DC6X Enspire Pro that can’t play hundreds of .FIL songs purchased over 10 years from yamahamusicsoft and other sites/stores :-/

Yamaha reps in LA have no current solution.

I tried the utility that Carol has on her website (ESEQ2MID) but alas it only converts one .fil file to .mid at a time and I have over 100 albums. Does anyone happen to know of any utilities that will batch convert those songs to midi files? I'm really missing my favorite music.

Thanks so much, Keith
Kassey22000 on DK Yahoo group.

PS: I hope to publish a full initial review on here regarding my 1st weeks with the DC6X Enspire Pro as I've learned a whole lot over a few weeks with this marvelous instrument.

You are correct on the file format issue. I had the same issue and needed to convert all of my Eseq disks to midi, but it is very labor

I will do some digging and see if I can recreate the process. 

Stay tuned. 

> On Aug 3, 2019, at 3:52 PM, kassey22000@... [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> For Carol, Spencer, Mark, Ian, Kevin and other stalwarts of this great resource:
> 
> 
> Having been a Disklavier fan for over 10 years, I realized that moving from an DC5 MKIIxg (with the 850 upgrade) to an Enspire piano might cause some potential conversion issues with Pianosoft media (smart pianosoft in particular).  This is because Yamaha wants only Stereo output on their new Disklavier pianos.  Yet I never thought that Yamaha would make the decision to stop supporting their own native file format (.FIL) on these pianos (they support Mid, Wav, Mp3).  So now I have a wonderful new DC6X Enspire Pro that can’t play hundreds of .FIL songs purchased over 10 years from yamahamusicsoft and other sites/stores :-/ 
> 
> Yamaha reps in LA have no current solution.   
> 
> I tried the utility that Carol has on her website (ESEQ2MID) but alas it only converts one .fil file to .mid at a time and I have over 100 albums. Does anyone happen to know of any utilities that will batch convert those songs to midi files?  I'm really missing my favorite music.  
> 
> Thanks so much, Keith
> Kassey22000 on DK Yahoo group. 
> 
> PS:  I hope to publish a full initial review on here regarding my 1st weeks with the DC6X Enspire Pro as I've learned a whole lot over a few weeks with this marvelous instrument.  
> 
>

I am assuming that you bought your ESEQ format music from Yamaha so you have the original floppy disks.. I have used Mark’s PPFBU software to convert those files to MIDI files. http://www.kinura.net.ppfbu <http://www.kinura.net.ppfbu/>   This only works on Windows operating system.  You convert them one disk at a time.  For some reason, I needed to use an old portable floppy disk player and not the Yamaha one I bought for the DKC850.

I found that my Yamaha wireless bluetooth interface, the BT-01 also worked well with my iPhone and Disklavier Mark II XG.    The details at:
www.midiplayertools.com/Connecting.htm <http://www.midiplayertools.com/Connecting.htm>

Now for my opinion part of this post 😂

I am old enough to remember buying my music on LPs.  I remember the conversions to 8-track cassettes and then those little cassettes.  I remember the first  CD my brother-in-law bought and the 1812 Overture blowing out his stereo speakers.  I remember the speakers that came with a Mark III Disklavier and the “new” less powerful ones that came with the Mark IV.  I can tell the difference between an mp3 file and the same song played and recorded on an analog system.

My first home computer was a Radio Shack TRS80 and then upgrading to the Commodore 64 and 128.  The concept of a disk drive of any kind, was not even invented at the time!  I built my own IBM 8088 and waited in line to buy Windows 95 so I could upgrade from DOS 3.1.

My first player was the Pianocorder Vorsetzer and the library of cassette tapes that came with it.  It was 80 pinball machine solenoids that rolled up to your piano keyboard.

My point is the hours of pure enjoyment that my family, friends and I enjoyed enjoyed with this equipment in my home - whether it was paying Pong on the Atari or listening to my 100 watt stereo system or my Mark II XG Disklaver with just one  speaker.

Our experience of sound has changed a lot in the 350 years since piano were invented.  It used to be each key signature had its own color, but now with Equal Temperament, all music notes are equidistant in tone.  We now hear music in black and white, instead of color.  Since tuning has been standardized, any music can be played in concert without retuning the piano.  No one alive ever missed the color in the piano music since the early 1900s because it had disappeared.

I feel the same way about audio MP3 files.  They just don’t create the live performance or an analog recording.  But in this age  of digital music, they take up less space.  But, do we really care?  Digital can give music more options.  And now you can have live piano music from your piano with surround style stereo.  Just enjoy it!

Carol Beigel

Carol,

we think alike, and experienced alike, possibly because we are the same vintage. I have similar memories, going back just as far. 
I DO agree with your observations on temperament and colour. SInce buying a Disklavier Enspire, I have been tuning it to a Victorian Temperament, EBVT III,  as developed and finessed by Bill Bremmer. Chopin, Schubert & all Romantic era music sounds so much better. I play Jazz at times and it, too, sounds fine, and not at all objectionable ( despite what I read somewhere that Jazz musicians don't like EBVT). Victorian Tuning actually uses noise cancelling techniques to make the piano sound sweeter.

I have the full instructions for a piano tuner to do it by counting beats, but mine was not interested, so bought Verituner on a 'reduced price' promotion and had paid for after 3 tunings. Now my piano is always in perfect pitch and always tuned perfectly at the cost of my time. Verituner is very accurate and reads notes despite the overtones, so using a tuning hammer is a breeze. It has a Bremmer setting, which is wonderful.

Write to me if you want fuller instructions for a Professional Tuner to work from.

Hi Carol and thank you for the advice and reply. May I just say over all the years of thoughtful & engaging responses, helpful advice, and kindness... you bring the color to this forum.

Regarding the floppies: I'd say about 1/3 of my collection are no longer readable. Floppies are sometimes delicate beasts and even with careful storage deteriorate. Many of the albums I purchased online from Yamahamusicsoft.com and other sites were (and still are) sold/downloaded as .FIL file/songs so there's no associated floppy disk. This is a big collection so I hope I can find them a home on the Enspire USB storage device for easy access through the (much improved) interface/app. For the life of me I can't understand why Yamaha would abandon its own native file/song format and refuse to let the new Enspire pianos to play these great songs.

Another helpful contributor just suggested another utility (Yamplayer) which I believe you still have on your site and I have locally. I'll give that a whirl for batch converting .fil to .mid and report back.

LONG Response below ;-)

Your wonderful post going back into the history of tech and pianos struck a cord with me as well.

As a teenager I cut my (personal computer) teeth on the TRS-80 (with cassette - it was fondly called the Trash80).

My first player piano was a 1927 Steck 5'3 Duo-Art reproducing grand and what a amazing piece of hand crafted genius it was! I only purchased this marvel because I couldn't get much satisfaction out of my SuperScope player attachment on a Yam GH1. So went looking for the older reproducing pianos and immediately feel in love with the Duo-Art piano (especially when playing the Rhapsody Blue from George Gershwin).

Ten years ago (after several years of shopping/investigation) I purchased a beautiful DC5 MKIIxq Pro - upgraded it to an 850 box and got the best of both worlds with Pro quality recording/playing plus (with a swap of a cable and one setting) DTV/Radio and much more. I love tech and adore pianos so Disklaveirs are a great match for me!

What attracted me to the DC6X Enspire was the improved quality of the acoustic piano itself - However I was reluctant at first regarding the new Enspire system. But more on this when I have some additional time with this new Disklavier to provide some solid feedback.

Happy listening :-)

It seems to me that I tried hooking up an external floppy drive to a USB port on an Enspire and played Yamaha disks just fine. I will check this out again.  This question came up when the Enspire first came out.  I would not have recommended the ugrade to owners of large collections of Yamaha disks if it had not worked.  I will go over to our local dealer and try this out again.

Carol Beigel


Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2019, at 11:03 AM, 'Spencer Chase' lists@... [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> that does what? it helps to include the question to which you are replying. the subject is not enough to let readers know what you are talking about and I am not going to go through all recent messages from the group to figure out what you are talking about.
> 
>  
>  
> Best regards, Spencer Chase
> 67550 Bell Springs Rd.
> Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
> Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
> Spencer@spencerserolls.com
> Spencer@...
> Spencer@...
> http://www.spencerserolls.com
> http://www.poodlex.com
> (425) 791-0309
> (707) 223-8212
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "androidus0@... [disklavier]" <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
> To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: 8/3/2019 2:13:45 PM
> Subject: [disklavier] Re: New Enspire owner with media issues
> 
>>  
>> There is a free utility called yamplayr   that can do it on a PC.  See zip file attached 
>> 
> 
> 
>

I will take 2 different brands of portable floppy drives.  To my great disappointment the Yamaha drive seldom works.  I have an older one (maybe back when floppies were 720k) that always works.

I also use this older drive to convert (back up) Yamaha disks to midi files using PPFBU.  Takes less than a minute per disk so you can convert a large library in a couple of hours.

I am fairly certain the Enspire has built-in wireless Bluetooth.  I used my iPhone running Sweet Midi Player to interrupt a salesman‘s demo.



Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2019, at 2:28 PM, kassey22000@hotmail.com [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Carol,  
> 
> I tried this at my local dealer a few months ago and the Enspire ST I tried would not recognize even the Yamaha USB/Floppy drive let alone play the songs.  I'll give it another try at home as well later today and report back :-)   
> 
> One of the big attractions (beyond the improved acoustic piano components) for the Enspire was the promise to have ALL of my various Pianosoft (Smart, Plus, Audio CD, etc.) albums play from one interface/app within the piano stored on a single USB device (The Enspire app is very robust).  That solution would have been so much more convenient for my household than what we were doing with the DKC-850 which was to play some songs off the PC/Server to the piano using DKVbrowser, while also using the native E3 app on the iPhone/Pad to control what was stored on the various media within the 850.  This need to have multiple interfaces/apps/remotes/tools - what have you, was a real pain when switching media and sources.  
> 
> If I can get some resolution from Yamaha Corp for these apparent media format issues, that promise may come true finally for us and perhaps many owners who would like to move up to the newer Disklaviers.  So I'm also reaching out to this very helpful forum to see if others have additional solutions.  
> 
> I remain optimistic because I really love this new C6X/Disklavier :-) 
> 
> PS - I just received an update from engineering on limitations to number of albums, categories, songs, etc and they are much larger than the prior piano software/firmware limitations.  I'll post this later today. 
> Thanks! 
> 
> 
>

Group,

Do we know this person?  androidus0@... <mailto:androidus0@gmail.com> .  The yamplayer.zip file that he attached was removed by my virus scanner – McAfee.

 

Kind regards

 

Geoff

 

 

From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com] 
Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2019 7:14 AM
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [disklavier] Re: New Enspire owner with media issues

 

  

There is a free utility called yamplayr   that can do it on a PC.  See zip file attached

Yes, I know him.� His name is Andrew, he's based in Canada, and he's the 
guy behind the eBay account playerpianocdsandfloppies, a third-party 
producer of player piano CDs in various formats.� He's supported 
development of MID2PianoCD in the past.

The attachment was likely stripped off for containing an executable of 
any kind, not because it was virus-laden.

Mark Fontana

On 8/13/19 6:51 PM, 'Geoff Ward' gward1211@... [disklavier] wrote:
>
> Group,
>
> Do we know this person? androidus0@gmail..com 
> <mailto:androidus0@...>. The yamplayer.zip file that he attached 
> was removed by my virus scanner \u2013 McAfee.
>
>

This person has only been a member since July 22. I loaded a good copy of Yamplayer to the files section.
Disklavier Admin.

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Geoff Ward' gward1211@... [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
To: disklavier <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Aug 13, 2019 8:24 pm
Subject: RE: [disklavier] Re: New Enspire owner with media issues

    Group,Do we know this person?  androidus0@gmail..com.  The yamplayer.zip file that he attached was removed by my virus scanner – McAfee.  Kind regards  Geoff    From: disklavier@yahoogroups.com [mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com] 

Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2019 7:14 AM
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [disklavier] Re: New Enspire owner with media issues    There is a free utility called yamplayr   that can do it on a PC.  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