Disklavier

I was ready to 'pull the trigger' on buying a used Disklavier and then I ran into some discussion about 500ms delays and timing issues. So here I am, hat in hand, looking for advice. My needs are for a piano to intergrate into a number of instruments that I have. I have a Wicks glockenspiel, a set of Degan chimes, drum section (cymbal, three drums, and tamborine) and organ pipes. All of these are MIDI controlled from my computer. I would really like to have a piano in this ensemble and I have been considering the purchase of a Disklavier. Since this would be a major purchase I must be very sure that it will work. Do you think that a Disklavier would be appriopriate for this application.


There have been a few postings indicating that others have controlled their Disklavier with a keyboard. This says to me that a Disklavier would work in my application. But then there have been some postings that mention a 500ms delay between the receiving the MIDI signal and the activation of the driver solenoid.  This would present timing issues for my application where a half second delay would likely be very noticable.


Therefore the first consideration is determine which Disklavier is the best suited for my application. I do not envision a lot of use of the built in playback device so a floppy disk system would likely be fine.

At the present time I am looking at a MX500QADC.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have posted a rough sketch of my system in the Photos section.

Many thanks in advance

Bill