# HELP: Transferring recorded songs from Arius YDP-S31 to Mac



## videoflyer (Aug 7, 2011)

A friend of mine has had a Yamaha Arius YDP-S31 for a little while. His wife wanted to record some music to send to a relative who needed some cheering up so she recorded it to the tiny little internal memory built into the keyboard but we haven't been able to figure out a way to get that recorded song FROM the keyboard INTO her Mac so that she can edit or email it.

The Yamaha website is almost literally no help at all. They have a piece of software that's Windows-only which might possibly help except that she doesn't have a Windows machine available for the purpose (and she's not one to dabble in VMs or Bootcamp, either).

They were told by a salesman that what they needed was a USB-MIDI UX16 cable, which they purchased. But it wasn't recognized by Garage Band and I haven't had any luck with it, either. I mean, it's a MIDI cable so, the way I understand it, it doesn't help with transferring digitally recorded music files...it's for transmission of MIDI control info, right?

Does anyone know how to get the single-song-slot memory transferred off the keyboard and into a Mac?


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## MisterMe (Aug 8, 2011)

OK. The Yamaha Arius YDP-S31 is a digital piano. It stores its data in .smf format files. The .smf extension standards for *S*tandard *M*IDI *F*ile. This means that any system that supports MIDI should handle these files without issue. In the case of Windows, the recommended application for playing these files is the Windows version of Apple's *Quicktime Player*. In the case of a Mac, the recommended application for playing these files is the MacOS X version of Apple's *Quicktime Player*.

It appears that the piano does not mount on your Desktop. Have you tried setting it as your Mac's audio source? Also, the piano stores its data on a memory card. Does the card fit a standard card reader. If so, then you should be able to simply use the Finder to copy the data file from the card to your favorite location on your Mac. If you can manage to locate a copy of the *Quicktime Player*, then you should be able to play the file.


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## videoflyer (Aug 8, 2011)

Hmm. Since I don't have the instrument in front of me, I've been working under the assumption that the memory wasn't on a card but, rather, was built in. I'll have to check on that since, obviously, that could simplify things greatly. 

Is .smf really the format for the recorded audio files? Or is that the format for other, MIDI-related files?

Thanks!


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## MisterMe (Aug 8, 2011)

videoflyer said:


> Hmm. Since I don't have the instrument in front of me, I've been working under the assumption that the memory wasn't on a card but, rather, was built in. I'll have to check on that since, obviously, that could simplify things greatly.
> 
> Is .smf really the format for the recorded audio files? Or is that the format for other, MIDI-related files?
> 
> Thanks!


There appear to be a lot of options that you have not yet tried to transfer the data from your piano to your computer. Carefully reread my previous post.

Now. MIDI files are not audio files. They are sets of instructions that tell MIDI-compatible devices how to play particular musical compositions.

For future reference, whenever you have issues with a device, visit the manufacturer's website for product specifications, software/firmware updates, copies of operators manuals, and such like. This is what I did in this case. The Yamaha website lists .smf files as the only files stored by your piano.

Think about this logically: The *Quicktime Player* plays audio and video. The *Quicktime Player* is the only software listed on file extension lookup websites that handles .smf files. The logical conclusion is that the *Quicktime Player* translates .smf files into audio. What else would you expect of a "MIDI-related" file?


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