Nord User Forum

[e_del]

Hello everybody,
I'm writing on behalf of a friend that I helped to upgrade his C1 Organ OS from 1.0 to 1.12, just today.
We made the upgrade today, and everything went OK.
From the the techie side, the only problem we had was that on an intel iMac the upgrade program didn't run, and we had to upgrade using an old G4 Macbook (maybe some binary incompatibility with intel OSX 1.8.5, who knows…).

But the main problem now seems the overall "keyboard tone", that my friend says it's changed, more "boxed", less dynamic, more "cheap", especially with the lower keyboard tones…
He's going to perform in this very moment, so I cannot be more precise about the problem (I had only a brief telephone chat, and I'll invite him to write some more detailed description, if necessary), but meanwhile I'm asking to you in the forum:
1) Did anyone experience any kind of tone variation just after upgrading the keyboard OS (presets and parameters were maintained)?
2) Would it be expected (I don't think so, but…)?
3) Having OS 1.12 up and running, will a "factory reset" turn back to the old 1.0 OS version? Or will it reset to 1.12?
4) In case answer 3 in "NO", Is there a way to downgrade the firmware to 1.0?

Any suggestion is welcome …
thank you in advance
Enrico Dell'Aquila

[mjbrands]

I don't have a C1 organ so I can't say anything specifically about that one.

Did your friend use presets (programs) to check the sound? I'm not sure if this is the case or not, but perhaps the factory presets need to be updated. Perhaps they slightly changed the way they are stored, etc. I would suggest making a backup of the current sounds and then sending a fresh copy of the factory defaults to the C1 again to overwrite them. If you made a backup, you can always restore that.

To make a backup or to send the factory sounds to the C1, you need a computer with a MIDI interface. The procedure is briefly described on page 19 of the C1 manual.

Here it is in a bit more detail:

1. Make sure the MIDI interface is connected to your computer and is working. Connect the C1 with the MIDI interface; MIDI OUT on the C1 connects to MIDI IN on the interface and MIDI OUT on the interface connects to MIDI IN on the C1.
2. Install a utility to send/receive MIDI SysEx data. For Windows I would suggest Bome's Send SX (http://www.bome.com/products/sendsx) and for the Mac SysEx Librarian (http://www.snoize.com/SysExLibrarian/) - both are free, but there might be limitations on commercial use for Send SX.
3. Start the SysEx utility and set it up to receive a backup from the C1 - check the documentation for the utility you're using to see how to do that. In SysEx Librarian on the Mac, I think you just click the 'Record Many' button in the top-right of the window.
4. Go into the System menu of the C1 (page 15-16 of the manual) and select Dump All. This sends a SysEx dump with all the current programs to the SysEx utility.
5. Now check and make sure Memory Protect is turned off on the C1 (see page 15 of the manual).
6. Make sure you have downloaded (from the Downloads section for the C1 on the Nord website) the zip file with the factory sounds - it is only a very small file. Extract this file somewhere you can find it. It will contain a single file with a .syx extension.
7. Load the .syx file with the factory sounds into the SysEx utility and send it to the C1. According to the manual (page 19) the display of the C1 will display 'rCu' while it is receiving the data - wait for the utility to finish sending the SysEx dump.

Now check the presets again for sound quality. If you want to restore the old sounds (backup), performs steps 5 thru 7 again but use the backup you made earlier.

As for your specific questions:

1. No idea, I don't have a C1
2. While I can imagine presets sounding different (I've had this on a different Nord), I would expect the sound quality to be the same or better after an update. This is also why I suggest updating the factory sounds.
3. It wouldn't have any effect, it would stay at 1.12.
4. If you can find the older firmware (I looked briefly, but wasn't able to find it) you can probably down-grade to an older version. Not an ideal solution though, since it seems 1.12 contains quite a number of important fixes according to the update history.

If updating the factory sounds has no effect (or you cannot find or borrow a MIDI interface) I suggest contacting Clavia about this via the support section on their website. You can also contact the distributor for your region (click on the Distributors link at the top of the Clavia/Nord website) - the advantage of this is that it might be easier to communicate with them, since you can just do it in Italian.

I would appreciate it if you can post a short update for this issue once you have more info or, hopefully, have it solved; this might be helpful for some other C1 owner who runs into this issue in the future.

[e_del]

Thank you for the quick response, we'll try the factory sounds update ASAP.
I'm not sure we have a MIDI interface available right now (we made everything via USB), but we'll find one if necessary.
I'll let you know...
thank you again
Enrico

[e_del]

UPDATE:
Contacted Clavia directly through their website contact page.
They confirmed that the new OS version has changed sound management and some functions (rotary, click, percussion, etc..) for a better simulation.
Does it change the tone? We're still not sure, but they were kindly sending via the official distributor an old 1.02 OS update, that we'll try to install ASAP, and see (hear) if anything changes...
I'll keep you informed.
Enrico