Good morning, everyone.
Michael, no matter what you do, there is going to be a delayed, audible response from the piano itself when playing a MIDI file from an external source. The simple reason is that once the note-on message is received by the piano, it takes some number of milliseconds for the hammer to go from a resting state to hitting the strings.
The situation is actually complex: Let’s say that the piano is set up to respond to MIDI data in real time. In this situation, loud notes will actually sound sooner than soft notes because the hammer travels faster when the note is loud.
Other complications can result when the piano is set to respond to MIDI data in real time: Let’s say that there are rapid, repeated notes, such as notes in a trill or tremolo. In these situations, a note-off message can come in before the key has finished its downward stroke and may interrupt the playback of the note.
For these reasons, the Disklavier engineers created a 500 millisecond MIDI Input Delay, which is the normal default on the Disklavier. This means that all incoming data is audibly delayed by 1/2 second. This delay gives the Disklavier time to look at the incoming data, decide when to start moving the keys and pedals, and thus achieve correct audible timing on playback.
In many situations, this delay poses no issues, such as simple playback of a piano solo performance or playback of piano plus MIDI accompaniment that is rendered by the Disklavier tone generator. In the case of ensemble tracks, so long as the Disklavier is responsible for playing them, ensemble playback is coordinated with playback of the piano.
If your customer is expecting ensemble tracks to be played by sounds that are resident in his computer, they will be out of time unless he shifts the MIDI data for the piano forward by 500 ms.
The MIDI In Delay on the Disklavier can be turned off. As I mentioned above, when it is turned off, the amount of delay will be variable, BUT the Disklavier tone generator will play incoming notes immediately.
Generally speaking, there are only two situations in which I have found it helpful to turn off the MIDI In delay:
(1) When using Home Concert Xtreme (from my company, TimeWarp Technologies), you have a scenario in which you play the piano yourself and the accompaniment tracks (played by the tone generator) follow your tempo. In this case, you want the delay turned off.
(2) When using Internet MIDI (again from my company, TimeWarp), you have a situation in which you need to coordinate in-coming MIDI data from another piano somewhere on the Internet. In this scenario, you want to coordinate the incoming data with video from a program such as Skype. If you have the 500 ms delay turned on, the piano will always be late compared to the Skype video. In this situation, you can turn off the delay because Internet MIDI has its own built-in routines for handling the mechanical delay of the piano using a 250 ms buffer—which matches up nicely with Skype.
Regards,
PianoBench
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> On Oct 22, 2015, at 8:41 AM, Michael Jurewicz michaelf.jur@... [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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> Thank you for the response. He is complaining about piano playback from an external source. I haven't been there yet, but he described playing the piano but using midi sounds from his setup and having a delayed response.
> Michael
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> Sent from my iPhone
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> On Oct 21, 2015, at 10:48 PM, 'George F. Litterst' PianoBench@... <mailto:PianoBench@...> [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com>> wrote:
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>> Good evening, everyone.
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>> Michael, is the customer complaining about latency receiving MIDI data from the piano or is he complaining that there is some latency when the piano plays back MIDI data from an external source?
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>> Regards,
>> PianoBench
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>>> On Oct 21, 2015, at 9:42 PM, Michael Jurewicz michaelf.jur@...m <mailto:michaelf.jur@...> [disklavier] <disklavier@yahoogroups.com <mailto:disklavier@yahoogroups.com>> wrote:
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>>> Hi all, so I have a customer with an upright MX100IIXG that I somewhat recently replaced the LED light circuit board on. I have to admit first off that I did not perform calibration as at the time I was not trained in how to do so and could not get a hold of the manual in time. Lame excuse, but anyway. Since then, the original problem of certain notes not being registered by the customer’s computer has been fixed, but now he is complaining that there is a latency on only certain notes and only some of the time. I have spoke with Yamaha already and they suggested to run calibration and make sure the piano is regulated. (Can’t remember how regulation was last time I was there) My question for everyone here is, does anyone know what setting in Protools the customer might have to adjust in order to correct this IF it is a problem with his program or MIDI setup? He mentioned that he’s never had any problem with MIDI connection in the past. His studio tech also said that everything looks good on the technical side. I’d just like to know if anyone else has encountered this problem and I’d like to be as prepared as possible going in.
>>> Thank you!!!
>>> Michael
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