Disklavier

> Hmm, thats not strictly true - there is no reason you shouldn't

Yes OK, I was over-simplifying, but the effect is pretty similar.  
And many new PC's now come either without a floppy drive at all, or 
with an HD drive than can't reliably write other formats.  Pretty 
soon the 'old' PC will be the only thing you can write DD disks on.

> I've yet to try this properly ...
> Does the 500ms delay affect everything going into the piano, ie 
> the synthesiser sounds as well as the piano, or does it just
> affect the normal piano ?

The 500ms delay is a genius idea, as the Disklavier actually needs 
to start pressing a note before the time the note starts (it being a 
mechanical action), and this delay is longer for softer notes (which 
is logical, when you think about it).  It's a 'feature' of the 
ability of a human player that isn't even considered when playing 
manually.  Everything gets delayed, so everything works, but plays 
back half a second after the computer thought it was going to be 
played.  

The only problem (that I have found) with this is when playing for 
example one half of a duet, and trying to play along with it and 
record the 'other' part.  The recording happens in real time and 
hence records half a second after the playback notes.  For this 
reason, there is an option in the MIDI setup to play the notes 
immediately.  The playback is slightly imperfect, but is good enough 
to play along to in this situation.  Or, of course, with any decent 
sequencing software you could just grab the entire playback and haul 
it back 500ms to correct it.

Otherwise it's not an issue at all.