playing along with thumb drive audio files on DGX-660

[jkatnic]

I bought a new DGX660 primarily to listen to audio files and lay down keyboard tracks on top of it. For some reason, the keyboard is not seeing the .M4A files on the USB thumb drive. I've reformatted it multiple times, renamed and recopied files, put them in root and user files directory and my only choice seems to be new audio. They play fine off the same media on my PC, but not the keyboard. One time the keyboard recognized one song file and played it back fine. Ever since though, i have been unable to add, listen to and play along with any other files on the same thumb drive. manual offers no help on this issue. Any idea what I'm missing? Or websites where i can get more info/tutorials on the keyboard?

 

[Ted Nicoson]

" j "

The DGX-660 will not play .M4A audio files. It requires audio files in the uncompressed Microsoft standard 44.1 KHz 16 bit .WAV format. See "Audio files" on Page 38 of the DGX-660's Owners Manual. M4A uses a compression codec that the DGX-660's operating system can not decode. This is pretty much typical of most keyboards that play audio files, although there have been some models in the past few years that will play files in the MP3 format, and typical of most keyboards that play audio files, the DGX-660's display will not show/list files that it can not play. If you have a library of M4A files, you can do a Google search on "M4A to WAV file converter" for a program to convert them for you, but use caution, as many of the search results are known sources of malware, particularly in their "download manager" software. For that reason, I make it a habit not to recommend any particular third party software. What was safe for me last week may not be safe for you this week !

The DGX-660 is a new model. It will most likely be a while before videos and tutorials begin being released for it, and these are almost always by third party vendors, often at less than professional quality. It takes time to produce a professional quality video tutorial. There are already quite a few entries for it in YouTube, but so far, most of these are demos and overviews, not tutorials. While demos and overviews may not show you "HOW" to do something, they can be useful in showing you some capabilities of your keyboard, that you did not realize it had. I did see one DGX-660 tutorial on YouTube that covered how to record with it. Just go to YouTube and enter "DGX-660 tutorial" in the search field. In the meantime, your best source of information for getting acquainted with your new keyboard is the Owners Manual that came with it. I recommend downloading a PDF copy of it, so that you can do electronic searches ("Edit/Find") for items of interest. It took me less than 3 minutes that way (including download time), to find the above answer for you. All I had to do was search on "44.1". You can download a copy of the DGX-660 Owners Manual from:

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/mus...ble_grand/dgx-660/downloads.html#product-tabs

Good luck and enjoy that new DGX-660 !

Regards,

Ted

 

[jkatnic]

The DGX-660 will not play .M4A audio files. It requires audio files in the uncompressed Microsoft standard 44.1 KHz 16 bit .WAV format. See "Audio files" on Page 38 of the DGX-660's Owners Manual. M4A uses a compression codec that the DGX-660's operating system can not decode. This is pretty much typical of most keyboards that play audio files, although there have been some models in the past few years that will play files in the MP3 format, and typical of most keyboards that play audio files, the DGX-660's display will not show/list files that it can not play.

The DGX-660 is a new model. It will most likely be a while before videos and tutorials begin being released for it, and these are almost always by third party vendors, often at less than professional quality. It takes time to produce a professional quality video tutorial. There are already quite a few entries for it in YouTube, but so far, most of these are demos and overviews, not tutorials. While demos and overviews may not show you "HOW" to do something, they can be useful in showing you some capabilities of your keyboard, that you did not realize it had. I did see one DGX-660 tutorial on YouTube that covered how to record with it. Just go to YouTube and enter "DGX-660 tutorial" in the search field. In the meantime, your best source of information for getting acquainted with your new keyboard is the Owners Manual that came with it. I recommend downloading a PDF copy of it, so that you can do electronic searches ("Edit/Find") for items of interest. It took me less than 3 minutes that way (including download time), to find the above answer for you. You can download a copy of the DGX-660 Owners Manual from:

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/mus...ble_grand/dgx-660/downloads.html#product-tabs

Ted, really appreciate the tip on using WAV format rather than M4A. Did the trick. Must have read the manual a half dozen times and didnt see that. Hope i can play better than i can read. thanks again!