The World’s Only Invisible Player Piano System

PNOmation II by QRS is easy to use, sounds fantastic and best of all it’s invisible!

State-of-the-art technology makes your piano the heart of your home entertainment system, easily controlled by universal remote, smartphone or a tablet.

Instead of streaming music from the internet or a computer, PNOmation II stores the entire library of music – everything from Frank Sinatra to Diana Krall to Billy Joel to Coldplay – right in its own virtual cloud.  Instead of shuffling and ripping CD’s, you  just sit back and enjoy the music!

In addition to being the quietest and easiest player piano system to use, PNOmation includes its entire library – thousands of titles and artists spanning all genres – for free for the first ninety days. Then, we give you hundreds and hundreds of the most popular selections to start your collection. You can easily sample and add additional albums to your library at anytime.

We can make any piano a Cloud Player Piano. Visit our gallery for a fun and free demonstration of Pianomation II.

A Brief History of Player Piano Systems

The first player pianos were invented in 1863 and came to popularity when Melville Clark invented the first 88-key player piano in 1901. For a century, player pianos used pneumatic systems that caused notes to play when the corresponding hole in a paper roll passed over a vacuum suction point. This allowed air to rush in, move the key-driver and cause the hammer to strike the string. It was a technological wonder in the early part of the last century, but the system had major limitations.

They did not sound very good because, unlike when a pianist plays, each note would play at the same level. Second, the pneumatic system was noisy, required a lot of maintenance and wore out quickly. Finally, the paper rolls that usually included only one song would tear and wear out.

Player pianos were popular entertainment before radio and television.

These limitations aside, millions of people crowded around player pianos, singing along as the lyrics scrolled by on the spinning roll. It was the introduction of the radio and eventually the rationing of materials in World War II that caused the demise of this once great industry.

As the piano began to regain popularity in the 1970′s, Marantz introduced a player that used a viable electromagnetic solenoid – not noisy pneumatic bellows – to move the keys. The system worked great and was reliable. Cassette tapes took the place of paper rolls – adding dynamics – and a computer controlled the signals going to the solenoids. Unfortunately, Marantz had other business problems and in the 1980 sold their technology to Yamaha who incorporated it into their Disklavier player piano system. The Disklavier used 3-1/2 inch floppy disk instead of a cassette and had more sophisticated features.

A new Disklavier system can add as much as $14,000 to the retail price of the piano.

While the Disklavier was somewhat successful, it too had its drawbacks. Its biggest limitations were a high price tag and a control box the size of a dorm refrigerator that had to be connected to the piano with an assembly of wires thicker than a garden hose. Within a few years, a California based company introduced a competing system called PianoDisc that reduced the size of the control box to about the size of a large college dictionary. While their control box was smaller, the PianoDisc system was also less reliable.

The demand still existed for a reliable, great sounding player piano. In 1991, QRS, the company founded in 1900 that had produced millions of paper player rolls (QRS sold 10,000,000 player rolls in 1926), introduced the Pianomation Player System. Superior technology increased the dynamics, making the piano sound as if a person was playing the piano live. Plus, Pianomation could be added to any piano, saving consumers thousands of dollars. Best of all, Pianomation did not require the expensive user box that most people did not want to see hanging on their pianos in the first place.

The new millennium saw the advent of disgruntled employees starting their own player piano companies. Brands including Pianoforce and Live Performance offered cheaper systems, but their poor design, engineering and quality control caused them to be rejected by reputable piano dealers and technicians.

Today, Steinway Artists like Joe Augustine release recordings for Pianomation.

In 2011, QRS introduced PNOmation II (Pianomation II), the world’s first player piano that stores music in its own cloud, making it even easier for customers to use. PNOmation II still used more advanced solenoids for increased reliability, while keeping the price to about half that of other player systems.