Nord User Forum

[Davidp]

Hello All,

I have just acquired a wonderful Nord Lead 2x Keyboard (B-stock ex demo) from an authorised dealer. Loving it but I am puzzled that I can't immediately hear anything at the 3.93 patch address (Weed Eater). I've tried moving the mod wheel about and transposing the keyboard range but still silence. On twiddling the filter frequency knob slightly I do get a high pitched twitter. Its as if someone has tweaked (filtered) the noise out before re-saving the factory patch. What is this patch supposed to sound like anyway. Any enlightenment anyone?

Regards
Dave

[Davidp]

Hi again,

Has no one got any idea on this?

Cheers
David

[mjbrands]

Why not restore only that sound from the factory sound set, so you know you've got the original?

The easiest way to do this is probably the following:

1. First backup bank 3 to you computer
2. Send bank 3 from the Factory sounds to your NL2X
3. Send program 3.93 to your computer (don't forget to save it)
4. Send back your original bank 3 to your NL2X
5. Send program 3.93 (which you saved earlier) to your NL2X

This seems rather cumbersome, and it is. But I don't know if you have modified programs or you own sounds in bank 3. If you don't mind overwriting the whole bank, just restore bank 3.

There may be programs to fetch individual programs from a bank (I think SoundDiver was able to do that for specific synths in the past), but I don't know if such a program exists for the NL2X. Maybe Nord has a program that can do that, but I always just managed my programs the old fashioned way (dump from synth, or send from PC).

[Davidp]

Hello mjbrands,

Thanks very much for your knowledgeable and detailed suggested solution to the problem. You are right, that is probably the most straight-forward approach to it.
However, I have only just got the keyboard so I'm not too confident about re-loading sound sets just yet.

Also I think I have only a cheapo e-bay midi to USB lead which may not be up to the job (it didn't work with a MicroKorg I used to own when I was trying to hook it up to the Korg PC editor).

So when I: a)Get a good cable. b) Summon up the courage to mess with patch loading, I will give it a shot.

Many thanks for your response, as always eager to help and ready with excellent advice.

Regards
David

[mjbrands]

Also I think I have only a cheapo e-bay midi to USB lead which may not be up to the job (it didn't work with a MicroKorg I used to own when I was trying to hook it up to the Korg PC editor).

It may not have been an issue with that MIDI-over-USB lead. I've had issues updating the firmware on my Dave Smith Poly Evolver (also done over MIDI); I've tried multiple MIDI interfaces, but they all had issues. As it turned out, the MIDI interface was sending data faster than the synth was able to handle. The DSI website described a way to solve this; slow down the MIDI transfer from the PC to the synth. After I'd done that, it worked fine.

Now in my case I needed to send a SysEx file to the synth; maybe the Korg editor was running into different problems.

I would try using SendSX on Windows or SysEx Librarian on a Mac. Both are a free download and fairly easy to use.

• http://www.bome.com/products/sendsx/ (the author asks you to purchase it if you find you use it a lot)
• http://www.snoize.com/SysExLibrarian/

For Windows there's also the MIDI-OX utility, which can do a lot more than just handle SysEx files. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to use than SendSX. It is excellent for troubleshooting MIDI issues and performing all kinds of translations on MIDI messages; for example, you can have it filter specific MIDI messages, change velocities, etc.

So when I: a)Get a good cable. b) Summon up the courage to mess with patch loading, I will give it a shot.

For now I would just assume your MIDI interface works fine. You could start with dumping a whole bank from your NL2X to your MIDI interface. When you can receive it properly, you can try sending that whole bank back to your NL2X. If something goes wrong, it's not an issue since you were sending back data that was already on the NL2X. As far as I know the NL2X checks if a program it receives is valid, so a failure should not leave you with broken programs. You may need to fiddle a bit with the speed settings when sending from your PC to the NL2X, but that won't be needed when receiving data from your NL2X.

For SysEx Librarian, you can find the documentation at the URL below; but also clearly describes how you can slow MIDI transfers down.

• http://www.snoize.com/SysExLibrarian/docs.html

You pretty much just set a delay to insert between separate SysEx messages sent via MIDI. A delay between 100 and 200 ms should work fine, if needed.



For SendSX, enable the delay in the Options menu.



From the Dave Smith Instruments website:

For MIDI-OX, the recommended Low Level Output Buffer settings are Size = 1,024 Bytes and Num = 128.

And here's a video explaining this stuff (just ignore the Korg specific stuff):

Watch on youtube.com

[Davidp]

Hi again mjbrands

Thanks once more for the massive amount of useful information produced so clearly that it may even encourage me to have a go. I'll have to set aside an afternoon when the mood takes me. For the moment I am having much fun just playing with the pre-sets on this beautiful red machine. I always wanted a Nord and now I know why! I passed on getting a Little Phatty (rubbish name) to buy the NL2X thinking the LP lacked long term appeal being a bit limited (I think Moogs do a few things really well but not a lot in total). I don't regret choosing NORD!

Thanks again.
Regards
David