TECHNOLOGY : Yamaha Corp. Harmoniously Blends Musical Sounds, Personal Computers

For years, Yamaha Corp. was content to be known as a maker of motorcycles, pianos, guitars, keyboards and other musical equipment.

But now the Japanese company’s Yamaha Corp. of America subsidiary in Buena Park wants everyone to know that it has the know-how to blend music and personal computers.

Since 1973, the company has manufactured semiconductor chips for its musical instruments. Since 1986, it has become a leading producer of chips that enhance the sound of PCs.

Yamaha supplies chips to the popular Sound Blaster sound cards that enable a PC to be attached to a pair of stereo speakers. The chip business is about 10% of Yamaha’s estimated $500 million in U.S. sales.

Last year, the company launched a new version of its computer-controlled player piano, the Disklavier. The pianos can replay exactly the performances captured on computer disks, as well as original music.

And this month, Yamaha is releasing a new package of speakers and software that can turn a PC into a virtual sound production studio. The package includes a device known as a tone generator that plugs into a computer.

Dubbed Hello! Music!, the package is the company’s bid to make Yamaha much more than just an anonymous maker of chips that go under a computer’s hood. The company hopes to become a well-known name on the shelves of computer retailers and in households.

“In the music industry, the Yamaha name is big, but people don’t know that in the computer industry, we are the standard for sound inside the personal computer,” said Ron Raup, senior vice president of the subsidiary. “Now we want to establish our name as an external standard.”

The Hello! Music! package sells for $349; speakers are extra. The CBX-T3 tone generator component of the package can produce 192 instrument sounds.

Yamaha makes a version for either the standard PC or for Apple’s Macintosh. Ingram Micro Inc., the computer distribution giant in Santa Ana, will distribute the package to computer makers and retailers.

Raup says the company will roll out a number of products that will expand Yamaha’s name recognition among the actual consumers of computer technology. He thinks computers with enhanced sound can reach a broader group of users than the current generation of equipment.

“We want to get the best of both worlds, music and computers,” Raup said. “No one else has done that.”