Disklavier

In early December of 2004 I purchased a DC3M4t disklavier and in 
February 2005 in an exchange of e-mails on the DUG I posted the following:

" It should be able to process Play Lists and handle other routine 
database chores without any strain and certainly without unusual delays 
or error messages.  The fact that it cannot do so at present is a 
reflection that the software code for the Mark IV needs to be debugged 
and perhaps rewritten in certain sections of the OS. "

At that time I was using version 1.05 of the Mark IV OS software.  Since 
writing that message Yamaha was kind enough (via Bill Brandom) to send 
me the version 1.10, followed a few weeks later by the version 1.11b 
(beta), and finally about two weeks ago the version 1.11 software.  In 
each case I noted a significant improvement in the responsiveness of the 
Mark IV in terms of navigation within the menus and in selecting various 
tasks for execution via the wireless remotes.  I am delighted to say 
that I have been using the 1.11 software now for over two weeks, and it 
is a very significant improvement over any of the previous software 
versions that I have had installed on my Mark IV.  In particular, I am 
now able to navigate into and out of Play Lists, and within Play Lists 
without any loss of communication or delays between selecting the task 
and execution.  Since I have created over one dozen Play Lists each with 
several hundred songs in the Play List, I can say with certainty that 
version 1.11 is now handling the execution of Play Lists and other tasks 
in a very responsive manner.  I am very pleased to see that Yamaha 
engineers have addressed the problems and bugs in the OS software in an 
efficient and responsible manner. 

I would urge any Mark IV owner who is not yet running the 1.11 OS 
software to obtain this software version from Yamaha by one of the 
methods described by Bill Brandom in his recent post to the DUG. I would 
like to publicly express my appreciation to Bill Brandom and others at 
Yamaha for allowing me to use and comment to them on the beta versions 
of the software leading up to 1.11.

In my opinion version 1.11 addresses the most significant and noticeable 
deficiencies in the Mark IV's OS software.  I believe that all of us who 
own and use the Mark IV can now look forward to future upgrades which 
hopefully will introduce such features as keyword searching of Libraries 
and Play Lists, enabling of USB ports for use with external USB drives, 
provision for backup data protection of the 80 GB HD on the Mark IV, 
creation of Play Lists via the addition of entire albums at once to the 
Play List as opposed to the present one song at a time, wireless access 
to the internet via the Opera browser now installed on the PRC-100, and 
other features that I have not even thought of.  From its introduction 
in November 2004, I have felt that the Mark IV offered tremendous 
potential for moving disklavier technology forward in a quantum jump 
over previous models of the disklavier.  The 1.11 software is a 
significant and encouraging  first step in realizing this potential.

Tom Wheeler