Nord User Forum

[Kinaesthetic]

Hi there,

I've owned a 2x for about 3 years and it was my first Nord (followed by an Electro 3 and a Stage 2). Literally after playing withbit solely for 2 weeks I'm getting a grasp of sound creation and how a synth actually operates.

This post is a huge thankyou to Nord for creating this beast and I'm very glad I stuck with it and ventured outside the programmed patches and performances. Creating your own as a newbie is pretty hard I found, after spending a lot of time with the Noise function in OSC2 and FM I'm getting a lot of joy and beginning to realise why effects weren't necessary.

By utilising oscillators you can generate a lot of complexity within one patch, chuck on Unison mode and all of a sudden a richness appears. I made a performance group of patches last night that blew my head off.. awesomeness.

I'd love to see some more users talking about their experiences with the 2x and any interesting things they noticed.

The 'secret' filter by holding down shift and pressing filter is sonically intimidating, lot of fun

Cheers
Dan

[mjbrands]

Time flies when you're twiddling knobs

I liked the Manual mode on the 2X, where you could see what was going on. I have a Lead 3 now, where the nifty LED rings show you the same thing. You can set up a morph using an LFO to move all the rings at the same time; instant light show!!

I also liked the very clear, high tones on the 2X (the NL3 has this too) without audible aliasing. Much better than a Virus for example, thought I like the bass-end of the Virus better.

[Kinaesthetic]

Time flies indeed!

I recently noticed the NL3 has similar stylings to the Stage, I can imagine that makes it a LOT of fun..

Manual mode is what has really helped me learn, actually showing you 'as is' on your knobs.. A few months back I almost sold my 2x to put towards a virus which from what I've seen and heard is its own world of craziness. But I'm glad I didn't as I wouldn't really have understood it and rely on programmes instead..

I'm going to look up aliasing, keep hearing about it and needs to be understood! I do think the 'grunt' you can get out of the lead is satisfying, havent immersed myself into bass sounds yet.. night is young here

[mjbrands]

This article is pretty nice, but maybe a bit technical: http://rs-met.com/documents/tutorials/DigitalSignals.pdf

Here's an example of a sawtooth exhibiting aliasing on the Kurzweil PC3 (listen to the sound in the 'background'):

• Strange.mp3

The Nord Leads also alias and apparently is most notable with FM sounds or when hard-sync is on.

Here's a 500 Hz sawtooth on a Virus TI:


And here's the same sawtooth via the U-he Zebra softsynth:


Notice the additional 'crap' in addition to the harmonics at multiples of the sounds base frequency so (1000 Hz, 1500, etc.). Also note that this is with the 'classic' oscillators on the Virus. You can also select several newer types that do not exhibit this behavior (it can be an intentional part of a sound). The Kurzweil PC3 also has DSP algorithms that do not alias (they use more DSP-power though). The digital oscillators on my DSI Evolver can also alias pretty badly (it also has analog oscillators), but since I like it for harsh, brittle sounds I don't mind.

One reason the Nords seem to alias less than the Virus (with 'classic' oscillators) might be that the DSPs run at 96 KHz (instead of the 44.1 or 48 KHz of the Virus), placing a lot of the aliasing outside of the range of sounds we can hear (i.e. above 20 KHz).

The Wikipedia page on the sawtooth wave also has some interesting info, including some sound examples of sawtooth waves with and without aliasing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave

Note that it's not just sawtooth waves that alias.

Edit: this one's pretty extreme: https://soundcloud.com/chqtestsubjects/aliasing-example
(from this KVR thread on aliasing: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5139237#5139237)

Btw. I scavenged the stuff in this post from the 'net...