Technics has decided to use almost the same file system that has been used for many years with hard drives for Technics keyboards. I am amazed that it has not changed or improved much in all that time. It seems to me that the decision was an attempt to give us song names that are more easily understood while keeping hardware costs as low as they can. So we have keyboard hardware that can only work with 8 character file names with a special system of 16 character string names used for the display. The SD display is great! We don’t have to live with cryptic 6 character names like we have used with floppies. But that file system comes with a cost. Windows can’t see the names that we see at the SD display of the keyboard. It sees a folder name like TFLD001 for the first folder on the SD card that we might have named “Big Band Styles” or whatever. It sees the file name 01001kn7.cmp for the composer file of the first song of the first folder. Windows sees a file named kn7000mn.inf for the file that contains all those neat 16 character string names. These file names are very similar (not exactly the same) to the names that were used with the Keysoft hard drives. So, although we can use the keyboard without the Tech Manager software, it would be nice to have a little help managing the file system that Technics has chosen to use.

I tend to agree that it would have been much better consumer policy to include something like the Tech Manager as a part of the keyboard. But, I expect that price competition forced some of those decisions. It would also have been much better, I think, for us to deal with Technics rather than Keysoft for something like the Tech Manager. Historically, Keysoft has not done well with English translation, nor with meeting it’s own predictions of software releases.

Having said all of that, I will buy the software just as soon as I can find it here in the US. The ability to put the SD card in a reader to edit names and reorganize the placement of data on the SD card at the computer is a great tool. I also like the ability to print a cross-reference between the 16 character string names with the actual file names that they are associated with. I feel confident that most any SD card reader will work with the files that I have since I don’t work with audio files or secure stuff on the SD card, not yet anyway. So, I will first try my little SanDisk Cruzer card reader to see what happens.