Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Bösendorfer Disklavier with historic performances

This video is fresh from Vienna. I thought some here would enjoy it. This is exciting to me:

Thanks for sharing this, Rich. I found this incredibly interesting to watch and I must say, I would absolutely love to try one of the Bösendorfer VC models one day. I've heard lots of good things about them, that's for sure.

That live "ghost" playing is really cool! Not sure if I buy into it being a good way to do lessons, but it would be pretty awesome to be able to have someone give a concert in your home from the comfort of their own home

How wonderful😊. I’m also not sure about the lesson utility — particularly since the teachers I have had have not owned a Bosie.... but I think I could watch the pedaling all day

WOW - I'll take 'two to go please' LOL

brdwyguy
JDM

I want one.

I Like It!

Thanks for posting Rich


~Lucubrate

Hi Rich , do you happen to know the differences between Disklavier vs Spirio R?

Thanks, Rich. Beautifully done, naturally.

Full Disclosure - I sell the Yamaha Disklavier.

I will share what I know. Wayne Stahnke, designed the SE reproducing system for Bösendorfer, who sold these systems between 1984 and 1990. At the time, these were stellar. Wayne was then hired on a consulting basis by Yamaha to give input in how to improve their Disklavier. That happened from the late 1980's to the early 1990's. At the time he certainly brought some improvements. I was not at all involved at the time, but colleagues who were there at the time said his input was useful.

Then in 2007, Wayne developed a retrofittable system called "Live Performance", which became "Live Performance - LX".

He ran this system and had dealers who would retrofit them into existing pianos. In fact, I spoke with him at one point about becoming a dealer. At the end of the day I did not deal with "Live Performance", not because the system was bad, in fact it was quite good. The library was not great. It was not well known. And he was small in comparison to Yamaha - or other retrofit companies.

I only say all of that to say that Wayne had been trying to sell his system to a manufacturer for exclusive use since almost the day he began making it. I believe that was his original goal. In 2014 after many attempts, he came to an agreement for Steinway to buy the entire system and offer it on their pianos. This was good for Steinway and Wayne had been trying to make this happen for years. Steinway had no engineering staff that could accomplish anything close to what Wayne had created. Before that happened, Steinway Hall would commonly offer the PianoDisc system as a retrofit.

Here is the difference, IMHO. The Disklavier has been developed since the 1980's by a dedicated staff of engineers. It is under constant improvement and updates, both software and hardware, and the quality and the size of their library dwarfs what Spirio has available, now - or likely a decade from now.

The Disklavier has remote performance technology. This means that a known artist could easily offer a masterclass to students no matter where they are located. This is a technology already being used in a number of universities across the USA and the world. During the pandemic, the demand for this has been crazy. The Disklavier also has a silent play option, which means that a player can practice silently without changing the action's feel at all.

I believe that the playback on the ENPRO and the SPIRIO are both at up to 1024 levels of reproduction and both have MIDI editing software so you can change your recorded performance without rerecording the entire piece.

Here is a video of Frederic Chiu using the remote performance system to deliver a masterclass from his school in Connecticut to students in Moscow:

I think his consulting actually continued through the late 1990s. He has mentioned some involvement with the Mark II Disklavier Pro (the first "Pro" model, which was launched circa 1999).


Wayne's business entity is named Live Performance. The player system was called the Model LX (or just "LX"). Internally, the LX bears some similarities to the earlier SE system and the original Pianomation system he developed for QRS around 1989 (which, after a falling out, was replaced in the early 1990s with the "Pianomation MIDI" system designed by the late Will Dahlgren).


Acquiring the LX system accelerated Steinway's entry into the high-end player piano market. Although the LX does not have recording capability, Wayne and his colleague Richard Shepherd in the UK got Steinway set up with four high-resolution recording pianos that were used for several years to begin recording the Spirio library. These four pianos were not identical but rather used a variety of recording technologies, some of which were under consideration for Spirio R.

Steinway realized they had a lot of catching up to do. From what I've seen, the pace at which Steinway has been recording outpaced the efforts of Yamaha, PianoDisc and QRS for the past 5-6 years. Moreover, all of Steinway's material is recorded, edited, and reproduced in high resolution, and the entire library (currently about 4400 tracks) is provided to Spirio owners at no charge. Yamaha's heyday for making new recordings was 1990 through the early 2000s. Following the dot-com market crash in 2000, it seems like Yamaha's recording effort lost a lot of momentum and hasn't fully recovered. A lot of the music Yamaha is currently selling was recorded 20-30 years ago. And even though the Disklavier Pro has been on the market for over 20 years, there have never been any commercial high-resolution recordings issued for it, only some unedited free material captured at the annual Piano E-competitions they've hosted. Following the launch of Enspire, Yamaha hasn't offered a smooth upgrade process to existing Disklavier owners. Enspire buyers who already have a library of content, even Yamaha's own material, have generally had to rely on Internet help or tech-savvy dealers to migrate from older player systems. Steinway is even worse in this regard- they won't even acknowledge the existence of competitor's music nor provide any help in adapting it for Spirio. It could be that Spirio simply isn't marketed to the type of people who might have previously owned a player system.

When Spirio was first introduced in 2015, Steinway often mentioned Stahnke's involvement in press releases. But his affiliation with Steinway ended soon after that, and it should be mentioned that Spirio R uses none of the LX electronics or software. Development of Spirio R was handled by a Long Island engineering firm new to the field of player pianos. The only remnants of the original LX may be the key and pedal solenoid designs, but I understand there have been changes to those as well. So it's no longer accurate to relate Spirio to Wayne Stahnke / Live Performance. Current Spirio systems are Steinway's own creation. (The way to tell them apart, by the way, is to look for the control box under the piano. If it's silver and rectangular with hard corners, it's LX-based. If the box is black plastic with rounded corners, it's a Spirio R (record/play) or Spirio Play (playback-only) of the newer design. All Spirios that record are the newer design.)


At the rate Steinway has been recording, I think their library will overtake Yamaha's in about 5-6 years (judging by the count of PianoSoft tracks at yamahamusicsoft.com) or less if Yamaha doesn't add much to their own during that time. One problem with Disklavier material is that not all of it has remained available over the years. Some has gone out of print, maybe for licensing reasons.

Surely Yamaha has experienced turnover, attrition, and aging out just like any other tech company. Based on years of reading the Disklavier forums, I'm not so sure the Disklavier series has continually improved. If you compare a Mark IV with E3 and Enspire, there's been some cost-cutting on the hardware side in later models. But I'm not saying the Mark IV was perfect, either. It's just that there was a definite change in approach after the Mark III and Mark IV that may reflect some bigger changes in technical continuity, leadership, and future direction.

Spirio R comes with software (an iOS app) to edit the high-definition recordings. I haven't heard that Yamaha provides any software to edit Disklavier Pro recordings (what Yamaha calls "XP" enhanced files). Has that changed? Back around 2010, now-defunct Zenph Studios had developed a program to edit XP files for Windows and MacOS called RePerform, but it has been hard to find in recent years and was mostly developed out of necessity in the absence of official Yamaha software. (Ordinary MIDI sequencing software is not up to the task, because XP material consists of multiple MIDI events per strike/release/pedal motion/etc. that must be edited together and kept in the right order. XP-aware software is needed to do anything other than delete spurious events.)

In my opinion, neither Yamaha nor Steinway is doing things 100% right these days, but both Disklavier and Spirio are a significant step above PianoDisc and QRS, and competition among them should improve the pace of innovation by both companies.

How much is the Boesendorfer with the Disklavier? Does the 225 have the option? I could only find VC versions with the option. Is that correct? I remember when we bought our 225 back in 1985, the 290 had the option of the Stanke mechanism.

In looking at the details, it says that the Disklavier has more prerecorded music available than the Spirio. Our Yamaha S400E has an earlier (1992) Disklavier mechanism (with a separate trolley). We have quite a few prerecorded discs that we bought for it. I believe they are all lower resolution than the new Disklavier mechanism or the Spirio. I am guessing that the larger number of Disklavier precorded music pieces includes those lower resolution albums, while the Spirio content is all higher resolution. Is that correct?

Finally, for a long time I tried to get the Glenn Gould Bach Goldberg variations that Zenph digitized, but it was not available for sale. Is it available on the new Disklavier? Thanks.

Hello Rich,

So, does this mean they put the latest Enspire system in the Bosendorfer? I know about some of the history with Wayne Stahnke.

I have the Enspire system in my DYUS5. I love that piano, it is a unique form of home entertainment. Does this announcement mean that I will have access to more historic performances through the Enspire app versus through midi? Of course, my piano does not have 1024 velocity levels.

I wish Yamaha would record a lot more pianists for their Enspire system. Given that the pandemic has shut down concerts, why can’t they pay artists to produce Disklavier recordings? The trouble is that the market is small, far smaller than CDs.

Steinway’s system is just not affordable for me, and neither are the Yamaha Pro grands. I was going to pay my teacher to record but the pandemic blew up those plans.

Why can’t Disklavier owners pay artists for recordings, as a grass roots effort?

Mark Fontana!

Thank you for closing some of the gaps in my knowledge. Of course I know who you are through your work in bringing us all MIDtoCD technology. For those who do not know, this is the technology that many player systems use to produce video sync with their performances. I believe this is what the Spirio uses. Correct me if i am wrong Mark. I believe that you would know. Yamaha does have its own proprietary way of doing this. It is useful to them because they have so much available in Disklavier TV (which is not broadcast in 1024 high resolution) so it will work with all of the "standard Disklaviers" out there which have a sensitivity of 256 levels.

As I understand it Mark, Spirio offers 1020 levels of expression because of the way the system is set up. The Disklavier offers a full 1024. Disklaviers can communicate with each other so easily over any distance, so using them in higher education and for professional use is already popular. Editing is certainly possible on the Pro Disklavier. I have several professional clients who do exactly that so their recordings can be edited for recording instead of taking 20 takes in a recording studio.

Also, Yamaha has maintenance mode, which makes up for any regulation difference between pianos. This assures that what I play on one piano would sound the same on the next one. This is a place that the Spirio misses the boat, IMHO.

Mark, I would love your input on what I've just added.


Yes, the Enspire Pro system is now available on the Bösendorfer. The historic performances are currently only available on the Bösendorfer Larry.

Rich,

But haven’t the historical performances been converted to Midi long ago and would be available on the Disklavier that way?

I wish we could talk Angela Hewitt into recording her Bach on the Disklavier. I know, it’s not a Fazioli, but I’d pay quite a lot for Disklavier recordings of her playing.

I have Qobuz and Tidal and have access to hundreds of thousands of CDs, lossless, on a high end stereo, but recordings of pianos are just not the same as on the Disklavier.

Back in the late 1990s, all the player system companies were using so-called "analog MIDI" on CDs which stored MIDI in a stream that could be transmitted over an audio channel- unfortunately, all using their own proprietary data formats. There wasn't a way for piano owners to encode their own performances into these formats, so I developed a Windows program supporting as many of them as I could figure out: MID2PianoCD. This program CAN be used to add MIDI control tracks to videos, but there are other ways to do it, too. Yamaha, for example, developed a technology that stores the MIDI stream separately and synchronizes playback using timecode embedded in the audio track of streaming video (Disklavier TV, previously called Disklavier Remove Live). These days, QRS and PianoDisc are still fairly attached to their "analog MIDI" streaming formats, but Steinway and Yamaha are moving away from them, in part because "canned" streams aren't very flexible - you can't adjust the tempo, for example.


Standard Disklaviers support ordinary 7-bit MIDI velocities (127 levels + off). Disklavier Pros extend this to 10 bits (1023 levels + off), but in a way that's backwards compatible to the lower-resolution version (the coarser 7-bit portion is identical, and the extra 3 bits just provide finer gradations between them). What many people don't understand is that electronic player piano systems (including Disklavier) only use a subset of those velocity ranges. Most Disklavier performances don't extend beyond the velocity range of about 24-95 (granted, this can vary a little but is generally about right), so, in reality, only a little more than 70 expression levels are really used on a standard Disklavier (only 57% of the "marketing number"). On a Disklavier Pro, just multiply those numbers by 8; 24-95 becomes 192-760, or about 568 levels that are actually used out of the "1024" advertised. Under the hood, Spirio has similar restrictions. The headroom in these velocity mappings has a purpose; it ensures that the very loudest and softest recordings (even unrealistically crazy ones) can be stored without clipping (exceeding the limit of what the data format supports). But real-world performances will generally fall within the ranges I mentioned. And both systems have physical limits to what they can reproduce. There's a point on each system where the playback mechanism won't play any louder because the solenoid drive is already completely saturated. And playing very, very softly via slow, precise depressions of the keys is difficult for solenoid-based player pianos because the friction and stiction of the action, variations in regulation etc. are much greater factors. Electronic player systems have improved over the years, particularly on systems like the Disklavier Pro that implement closed-loop control, but the physics of solenoids have always made soft playback and fast repetition challenging.

As a consumer, I wouldn't focus so much on comparing the number of expression levels these systems claim to support. Once you divide the dynamic range into more than 20-30 levels, most listeners can't tell adjacent steps apart anyway and are just satisfied if they hear natural-sounding accents and phrasing. Around 20 years ago, there was an academic paper about how consistently various reproducing systems could reproduce specific expression levels on command, and my recollection is that the results weren't so impressive.

It doesn't mean much to say that Yamaha's data format technically supports 4 more expression levels than Spirio when neither system comes close to using the full range of 10-bit values. A better comparison would be to examine the maximum and minimum hammer velocities each system can reproduce on a given size of piano, the temporal resolution of their recordings, how well each system handles challenging repetition and soft play passages, etc. I've been considering developing a test suite to make these kinds of assessments.


Since the late 1980s, ALL solenoid-based player systems (including Spirio) can be calibrated by technicians (or tech-savvy users) to achieve consistent playback. On systems equipped with recording capability, the process can be more automated (using the recording sensors for feedback to adjust the playback system), whereas playback-only systems usually have to be adjusted by ear. But they all have this capability. Maybe your confusion regarding Spirio comes from the calibration procedure not being exposed or available to piano owners; so far, Steinway provides the tools and software only to factory-trained technicians, not unlike how with cars, it's gotten to where some technical adjustments can only be done by authorized dealers with special equipment.

Thanks for responding Mark and I totally agree.



Mark,

Again, thanks for your response. No confusion here. You are coirrect. I AM referring to the Disklavier's ability to take into account a difference in action on its own through "Maintenance Mode" and without a technician. I believe this is the only reproducing system in the world with the ability to make up for regulation issues on its own (with the customer's direction).