Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards P-515 locked up completely

My P-515 had some type of a crash. I was playing, listening with external monitors, when all of a sudden both speakers started making a loud clicking sound. The panel was unresponsive, however I was able to turn it off with the power button, BUT, that still didn't stop the noise - I had to turn off the power source to stop the noise.

It was plugged into a computer via USB at the time,but I was using the on-board sounds. I did try removing the USB cable first - that didn't help.

Greg

You may have unlocked an hidden on-board sound. Or does the manual of the P515 say that "the instrument produces loud clicking sounds and becomes unresponsive -> this is normal, but only very seldom occurs." After all, this is what the NU1x manual says about the loud note

Snortle. (that's a combined snort & chortle)

Greg

I think we expect too much from our pianos. They're only human . . . they're only human after all. Don't lay the blame on them . . . .

Now it is time to pray for a software update and better management of software development at Yamaha.
Lets see, if the CP88 will do this once live on stage?

sullivang,
what did Yamaha Support have to say about this fault?

How is a software update going to fix a hardware fault?

How do you know it is a hardware fault?

Because it looks like one. A power surge resulting in a PSU fault is the most probable scenario leading to these symptoms.

How often have you seen such "power surge with PSU fault" happen?
In this case, the device would have gone dark with PSU failure following a power surge, and it would not have continued to make noise until switched off. The computer nearby would also have been affected by a power surge of that order of magnitude, at least the USB port burned...

The symptoms match exactly what to expect from the 16 V DC going off limits: micro-controllers locking up, (pre-)amplifiers starting to make noises. An incandescent lit display might have flashed as well.

People overestimate the power of what firmware can do quite a lot it seems.


A computer PSU is a bit more sophisticated. It has continuous output voltage monitoring and shuts off immediately, if these go off limits. A 400 W PSU can stand a surge much better than a simple 40 W brick or a wall-wart.

So, what you are describing is:

- crappy surge protecting in the PSU of a 1500.- USD digital piano
- missing input voltage monitoring inside the digital piano
...
From the end customers view, that is about the same as poorly developed firmware / software.

Shamed be he who thinks evil of it.

We used to have armchair quarterbacks.
We now have web surfing repair technicians.

When you get an external PSU brick like the Yamaha PA-300C, you know that costs have been cut.

Just look at the after-market pricing:

https://www.thomann.de/intl/yamaha_pa300.htm

That's for a $10 part made in China.


That needs to be on the PSU. There is not much a DC device can do about receiving the wrong voltage.

Not sure whether it was a surge or not - I definitely didn't notice the room lights dim though. Re power management, there would of course be internal regulators creating stable low voltage supplies, and I tend to think that proper design would at the very least cause the processor(s) to cleanly reset/restart if the main internal supply voltages went under voltage momentarily.

Greg.

It is not uncommon to find computers with medium/high-end components powered by a low-quality PSU. The issue is that a quality PSU may cost 10x more than a cheap version that is advertised as having an equivalent efficiency and power rating. Given that a DP has low power requirements and demands a stable power load, I seriously doubt that a DP manufacturer would ever decide to install a high-quality PSU and reduce its profit margin. Unfortunately, I do not remember anyone that has opened up a top-tier digital piano to be surprised by the high-quality of its capacitors and other components...

I did not see any answer to this.

i belive there is a way to reset the piano to factory default. You have to hold the last key when the piano is shutoff, then while holding turn on the piano, and let the key go after the screen say factory reset complete and it comes to the normal view

At this point we don't know if a factory reset will help, or if this is a case of fried hardware.....

I'd be surprised if there is anything fried assuming a restart brought the DP back to life...I'd like to think that if that was not the case the OP would have said the DP locked up and it never came back on ever again! :-)

I've reported it to Yamaha - will let you know what transpires.

And of course it came back to life. Again - I had to remove external power to reset it. (I did that by pulling out the plug from the back of the unit, and plugging it back in again. That was simply because I was too lazy to work out which AC outlet it was plugged in to)

Greg.