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Another advantage of 5-pin MIDI connections in general is that I think they are the most future-proof. There was a time when keyboards added parallel, serial, or SCSI ports for additional features... all now nearly useless... but 5-pin MIDI always survives. There are early USB keyboards that are now crippled by the fact that they required drivers that are not compatible with current operating systems... but if they also had 5-pin MIDI, they still work. If I wanted to buy something I wanted to still be able to use with a computer 10+ years from now, I'd have more confidence in a 5-pin connection than USB, I'm not as sure anyone will still be using USB 10+ years from now. Sure, if and when USB is phased out, there will probably be adapters to whatever comes next, but adapters are not always flawless, and an adapter that might work fine for many devices may still be problematic for something that requires the timing tolerances of MIDI. (In fact, IIRC, some early RS232 serial-to-USB adapters were fine for computer peripherals like printers and scanners, but problematic for MIDI.)

Will wireless get better? Sure. Will it entirely replace hard-wired connections for serious professional use, in our lifetimes? Not so sure. Wireless mics have been around for decades... no one uses one in a professional recording studio.

Wireless mics have been on my mind during this thread and wondering about the very thing you now confirm about who or where or why they may be best used .... i guess wireless mics do .... or might further reduce the chances of performers becoming accidentally shocked or electrocuted due to touching 2 points with unforeseen albeit sufficiently high ground loop potential differences.

Yes but in love performance it is extremely prevalent especially with in ear monitors.

And midi, is not an especially fast or demanding protocol compared to Audio.

When the MIDI from the DP is processed by a VST instrument, it becomes an audio stream. You can’t send back the audio stream through a MIDI link. (But with some Yamaha, you have audio over USB and can send the audio stream back to the piano).

Some VST transform a MIDI stream to a MIDI stream which can be sent back to the piano. They are typically arpeggiators or something like this. Very special VST. Maybe not what you mean by a VST.

I doubt anyone has ever been seriously injured by a microphone in a recording studio. Except maybe if someone swung it around Roger Daltrey style and whacked someone in the head with it. But the point is really that a wired mic is still what gives you the best quality and most rock solid, predictable behavior.

Getting back to the original question, the funny thing is, I've never seen lack of USB as a dealbreaker personally (I have plenty of non-USB gear)... but I *have* eliminated possible purchases because of lack of 5-pin MIDI. For my own use, that's the one that can be a dealbreaker! Though now that host adapters are more widely available if needed, and iPads in the rig can be so well multi-functional too, I could conceivably be less dogmatic about that than I used to be, if something were sufficiently tempting for other reasons.

Thank you Frederic, your answer is very much on target of what i was asking about “ Some VST transform a MIDI stream to a MIDI stream which can be sent back to the piano....”. I think it was Gombessa who’s recent posts about midi data in context of midi interface vs usb versus etc...... led me to think maybe some VSTs are able to send the processed sequence back to the DP as midi data ......definitely closer to what i am asking compared to “love performance” 🥰 for crying out loud 😂

Picking up from what Frederic said, 5-pin MIDI never transmits audio, in any direction. Only MIDI data. (USB in a keyboard can conceivably do both MIDI and Audio, though the latter is often not implented).

So when the D1 outputs MIDI, the data arriving at the computer is not audio. The computer can turn it into audio (NOT the same sound that's in the D1, but some other sound you have available on the computer) and can add effects, etc. That sound can then come out of the computer's headphone jack or speakers or any speakers connected to the computer, or to an audio interface that is attached to the computer. That sound can also sometimes come out of your piano (or from speakers attached to your piano), if your piano has--as you said--an audio Line Input connection, or in SOME cases, a USB connection, or even possibly a BT connection but that will probably have too much latency to be usable for this purpose. But audio never comes in via the MIDI jacks, which again, are only for MIDI data, and not for audio.

Of course, i was referring to live/stage accidents down through the years , some of which happened to prominent and in some instances still-living rockers, although one may reasonably ask - seriously, how alive is Keith Richards today ? - you can still learn about IF you properly navigate the murky waters of searching internet ... but back to OP, will the lack of D1 USB break their deal...?

Afaik, wireless mics and minitors use radio-like transmission over dedicated high-freq bandwidths and foolproof channel separation. This is extremely fast, analog transmission (or adc-dac which is basically analog with a digital bridge). Do not bring more confusion to this already endless thread by suggesting that BT or Wi-Fi is the norm in professional settings. Wireless mics and transmitters are as old school as 5pin midi...

Okay, so except for what Frederic said about exceptional VSTs, it looks like there generally is no “disable local echo” in the context i asked. This would seem to put a premium on D1 users or others in a similar midi-boat to rely on their computer’s sound system instead of their DP’s.... which theoretically could be a dealbreaker.

Yes, wireless mics as they are are already more stable/reliable than anything over bluetooth or wifi. They still don't provide the best quality, and are still not entirely immune from noise/inteference, and still wouldn't be used in a studio environment, but sure, are very widely used for gigs, where best quality is not the over-riding concern... putting on an entertaining show is the priority, and it helps for the singers to not be tethered.

PCs can output MIDI. So if your DP has a MIDI-IN as well as MIDI-OUT (if it has one, it will have the other), then it can accept MIDI from your PC or any other MIDI device.

If your aim is to "transform" the MIDI signal in the PC/DAW in some way and then output it back to the DP for playback, that should work fine. If you're just want to hear what you're playing through DP while you transmit MIDI to the PC, then all you need to do is turn down/off your PC's sound output, and turn on your DP's "local control" as you play--the MIDI signal will still be sent in the background.

It depends of what you call a « disable local echo »… when you use a VST instrument, then create an audio stream, it is only useful if you send it to an audio interface or something which behaves like.

On Reaper you can switch the monitoring off which can be seen as a « disable local echo ». If you disable the piano sound too, you will hear nothing ! Not really useful.

I think what you want is to « hear the VST sound on the piano speakers », it can only be done with LINE-IN, Bluetooth Audio Inputs (with latency!) or Audio over USB. (In a few word, an audio link I don’t think we can find on a cheap DP).

disable local echo translation = do not send vst audio stream to computer output, pack it in midi format and send back to DP so that DP can unpack and play via its sound system.

While still reading/digesting Gombessa's recent response, it seems that either it cannot be done as i've asked ..... or it can .... but if it can't the OP would need to be satisfied playing via his computer sound system.....

Again, MIDI has no audio capabilities whatsoever. It is impossible to ever send audio over MIDI. The closest you can come to that is that some USB connections permit sending MIDI and audio simultaneously over a single USB connection. But the MIDI and audio data streams are still two entirely different things. You cannot put audio in "midi format." If you want a DP to play audio from some external source, the DP must have an audio input (whether a dedicated line input, or possibly USB input, or, with added latency, possibly bluetooth input).

In the case of the D1, there are no internal speakers anyway. So if you want to use your D1 to play, say, pianoteq, then all you need to do is plug your amp/speakers/headphones into the computer instead of plugging them into the D1. Being able to send computer audio to a keyboard that has no speakers is of limited utility, unless maybe you're looking to play the internal and external sounds simultaneously (i.e. in splits or layers), or use a keyboard's sequencer to play a sound that resides on your computer, or process the computer's audio through an effect that resides in the keyboard, those kinds of things. If you simply want to use your keyboard to play a VST, there really wouldn't be much benefit to sending the audio back to the D1 anyway, even if it were possible.

I second this..

The Yamaha USB drivers i had some issues with it here and again.

But I should note my yamaha was pretty old and my computer was pretty crappy at the time so it could have been that.

I love my D1.

the midi cable works very nice with VSTs on mac at least. Havent really tried it on Windows yet.

and wrt to the 2 sensor action, I honestly don't notice it at all

Personally i love the action of the korg. the RH3 just feels more steady than the GHS on yamaha and although the ph4 standard on the roland were pretty good, with the let off and all,,, the rh3 to me still feels more steady.

(I owned a p105 yamaha and a fp30 which are both now sold)

Are you talking about those small yamaha pianos with light keys or digital pianos with weighted keys? I'm afraid of having hardware issues with used digital pianos. My budget for the piano is around $800-900 and maybe even $1000. The less the better because I also want a yamaha modx6.

At that price point for a new piano (which is a good decision) you have to compromise on the dealbreaker because, afair, there are no models that have BOTH midi 5pins and midi usb... None is a limitation.

There are hammer action boards in that price range with both 5-pin and USB ports: Casio PX-360 and PX-5S, Kurzweil KA90 and SP1. But yeah, a slightly higher budget opens up a greater number of possibilities... Roland RD88 and Juno DS88, Kawai ES520, Casio PX560, Yamaha MX88, Korg Kross 2 88.