[ Editor's note:
 [
 [ We fans of the old instruments have a tendency to dismiss new
 [ innovations and ignore the new marketplace.  But the money which
 [ customers spend on new solenoid pianos and music media is
 [ considerable.
 [
 [ Frank & Tony Decap's firm, Decap Herentals, is among the few
 [ mechanical music manufacturing firms today who are not focused
 [ exclusively on replicating mechanical musical instrument designs
 [ of 80 or 100 years ago.  They seek honest advice from the readers
 [ of MMDigest about today's marketplace.
 [
 [ Within his article below, Tony Decap asks for
 [
 [ (1) quantitative (measured) data which shows how old pneumatic
 [ systems compare with new solenoid and computer systems, and
 [
 [ (2) subjective information about the musical appeal to today's
 [ consumers of the music media, old and new, which is composed
 [ and arranged for performance by mechanical musical instruments:
 [ book music, music rolls and MIDI files, etc.
 [
 [ Many opinions about (1) have been published in MMDigest; see, for
 [ example, the discussion thread, "Pneumatic vs. Solenoid Pianos",
 [ indexed at  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/KWIC/P/pneumatic.html
 [
 [ Such opinions are entertaining, but this time I request that
 [ replies to (1) offer references to published quantitative data
 [ as well as opinion.  :-)
 [
 [ The topic of (2) has been discussed before and deserves attention
 [ again.  Please offer reasoning as well as opinion.
 [
 [ -- Robbie

Since I started the discussion about the comparison between different
mechanical music instruments ["Is Automated Music a Dinosaur ?", in
020114 MMDigest], I will try to stay involved in the responses.

First, our apologies for the term dinosaur.  It seems that some people
may be hurt by it, but it was not intended disrespectfully in any way.
Remember that we ourselves are building these instruments.

It occasionally happens that outsiders join our conversation in our
local pub.  (No player piano there, sorry to say.)  Once they find out
what we are talking about, we get different responses.  They often
get these big eyes, and ask us, "Is _that_ still being made today??"
Sometimes this makes _us_ feel like dinosaurs!

I'm thankful for the responses that are being made.  Some of them are
really pressing a point.  I may not agree, but that's of no importance
at all.  Let's just all try to listen and learn.

Just for the record, if I talk about our work (which I must do to
compare experience), please don't see it as a sales pitch in any way.
We're not looking for some hidden advertisement, but only opinions.

In the discussion so far, some problems that we think about a lot do
surface.

Comparing mechanical quality from a technical point of view is actually
pretty easy.  You connect your measuring equipment to the instrument
you want to know about, and analyse the results.  They speak for
themselves.  And as much as I love a discussion, if someone jumps out
of a plane and falls down two miles and hits concrete, the chances that
he is going to walk away with a smile on his face are kind of
non-existent.  This of course has to do with speed, gravity and all
other laws of nature that can not be changed.

This is very important to acknowledge.  You can not change nature, but
you can try to control it.  This means that you have to use the best
possible means.

It is a matter of fact that air is not such a reliable medium.  Air
molecules have mass, so they tend to collide with surfaces in all sorts
of undesirable ways.  And because they have mass, they create resistance
if you try to transport them to another location.  An easy experiment
is to try to blow through a long tube; the air coming out on the other
end will have lost a lot of energy, depending on the length and
diameter of the tube.

Another big disadvantage of air is that it is a gas, and gas can be
compressed.  This means that you have to put more air in then you
normally would expect.  If you would use water, for example, you would
only have to put the volume of water into one side that is needed to
fill up the bellows on the other side, at whatever pressure the spring
load is on the bellows.  You would need more strength if the spring
load is heavier, but not more water.

With air it is not so.  What happens is that when you open the valve
on the input side, the air starts streaming.  Pressure starts building
up until it is big enough to overcome the spring load.  So if your
bellows is far away, you will have to blow in a lot of air to build
the pressure equally inside the whole tube until this pressure is high
enough.  Then, when the bellows is released, all the air must
decompress.  To activate a note with blowing air, you load the air
(which behaves like a spring) up until the pressure has the force
needed to activate the bellows.  This takes some time, and will result
in a delayed response of some kind.

We sometimes compare compressed air with towing a car using a long spring.
Whenever the first car starts pulling, the spring must stretch until it
can move the second car.  But then the second car will gain speed and,
if you're not careful, will catapult against the car in front.  It will
take a lot of effort from the two drivers to arrive home safely.  This
is not an easy system to control well.

Vacuum seems to be a great way to overcome some of these problems.  But
I have no knowledge about this kind of system, although I do have some
ideas, but I can not explain exactly why that is.

Because of all the difficulties and limitations with air, you will soon
look at the possibilities of electric current.  And indeed, if you
experiment with electricity, you soon will find that there are much
advantages.  A simple example is the good old telephone line from
Europe to America.  Just try to accomplish this with a tube of air!
To be correct, also electricity has some of the same problems as air
regarding resistance, etc., but with far less consequences.

So our experience tells us that the new systems are better suited to
accomplish a task with greater accuracy then the old ones.  This raises
the question how the older systems can be far better (as in "there can
be no comparison at all") than the new ones (I liked the wrist watch
story in this regard).  I'm not saying that they are not better, I only
wonder how this can be.  Is there any technical measurement data to
confirm this?

If the new system would be proved better in a technical sense, could it
be the other problem mentioned, meaning that the music provided by the
manufacturer of the systems is the culprit?

We have a lot of experience with this, and not all is good.  I believe
that it is a fact of life that, when you buy a music system, you need
music to go with it.  The problem here is that the manufacturer of the
instrument or reproducing system is expected to provide this.  But if
you think about it, this is not so normal.  The companies who build the
TV sets are not expected to provide the soaps or movies, and the
manufacturers of PCs are not expected the provide the software, and the
manufacturer of the CD player is not expected to provide the latest Hit
CD.  So why do we have to provide the music?

Well, probably because no one else will.  But this is a big burden.
And because a big repertoire is needed to convince a buyer to go for
it, bad music is just standing around the corner.  It would be a dream
that musicians around the world would find it in their hearts to start
programming _good_ MIDI files to help us manufacturers out this
deadlock.  If we want that old jazz repertoire, we need the best
possible musicians to record it in the computer for us.

In regard to the music quality versus system quality : If you see a
lousy movie played on your TV, do you then say "what a bad TV set"?
Or if you play a lousy videotape, do you throw away your VCR?  I don't
think so.

But we first must determine what the problem is: is it the system or
the music?  Maybe some people have more data and can shed more light on
this subject.

I believe that this is enough for today.  Thanks again for your
responses.  I read them with the utmost interest.

Best regards,

Tony Decap
Tony & Frank Decap, DECAP Herentals, Belgium
http://www.decap-herentals.be/