Nord User Forum

There was a moment when I had Roland RD700GX1 with Supernatural expansion (same sounds as in new NX), Ivory II, Pianoteq Pro and Nord Piano. At the moment still have last two.

It still quite funny that all these solutions are good in some respect, but still having problems in some other:

Roland Supernatural Pianos
+ this uses kind of a hybrid technology to get rid of both velocity layers and looping effect. With its own keyboard it's very expressive instrument and we are closer to V-piano
- it has some nasality, muddiness and dark color which can be difficult to mix (in studio or on stage). Giving EQ made it sound unnatural.

Ivory II
+ difficult to say anything positive about it: it has lot of layers and sampled till the end so there's no looping
- sound is uneven (some keys sound/respond different than key next to them), velocity response-scale is very difficult to match with your keyboard to feel natural. Those pianos don't sound good out the box, there's again need to fix them with EQ...

Pianoteq Pro
+ this is a very intresting own world: a group of people - passionate developers and devoted users - who try to make it better and better. (Modeled) sound definitely hasn't any layers or looping and you can modify it as you like.
- IMO there's still a lot to catch with modeling: especially we are speaking about natural attack of piano. Some areas seem to be more difficult to model than the others: low mids area is still the most unnatural for Pianoteq.

Nord
+ nicely recorded "pure" piano sounds that respond very nicely to your playing. Especially I like playing with Nord Piano touch. My NS2 (76) is close but IMO not good as NP. Lady D was like a miracle to me when A/B-compared it to Ivorys Steinway: How the hell did they manage to make better Steinway with 80MB when Ivory has spent gigabytes?
- this "pure" sample-playback approach leaves us with possibly audible velocity layers (personally I haven't tried to reveal them), and looping. Maybe Bright Grd could have few more layers in the lowest velocities...

To sum it, to me Nord was a winner from all those piano solutions which all use a little different approach how to do it.
It's much about recording I think, and Clavia has made a good job there and Synthogy has not. Roland does not spend gigas to have smooth velocity scale and no looping, they have some other tricks. Anyway maybe it's these "tricks" (processing) which makes it sound unnatural. Complete modeling (V-piano and Pianoteq) has still quite a lot to catch sampling IMO. Still I believe that some day it will. Let's see how many hybrid solutions are needed before that.

This thread is getting ore interesting with each post IMO.

AudioBird: Yes did you check out the free 40 day demo? I used it for the trial then bought it and never looked back. Its so fulfilling - the diamond module. I never used the other modules there not bad at all but dont thill me like the diamond module (which is the only demo model). The diamond module speaks for itself, so responsive it just yearns for the treatment - just like an idealised real instrument. Here's another demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nACe7dusDF0 Listen to those last throbbing notes. This amber module has a more 'coarse' sound. its my second favorite its darker the difference is like between milk chocolate (diamond) and plain (amber).

JacksonP

Ivory II
I am suprised at what you said about this instrument, its well known as being one of the best sampled pianos.

Agree with your view on Pianoteq - they have a long way to go, but I do find there electric painos and other modules like the harpsichords, to be rather good. I would not buy for the pianos (would never use them, close to unuseable in my opinion) but I might for the electrics, which seem better than the nord for me. I have the demo and I dip in every now and again.



I had never heard of the Roland Supernatural Pianos. I checked trhem out on u tube. They do sound pretty good, but its easy (for me at least) to get carried away with the virtuosity of the player rather than the sound of the piano.

Has anyone tried the Vienna Imperial? Its Very Big ( but big is not necessarilly beauitiful) at "Up to 100 velocities per key, 1,200 recorded samples per key" it requires its own 60 gigabyte dedicated drive!

Now I a not stating its good, in fact I have some VLS orchestrea stuff and its (huge but) run of the mill really.

Yet
the contrast is great 60 gig of samples compared to let me see 82 mega bytes for the Boss thats 700 times bigger!!!!!!

I´ve spent some time trying to figure this out, and it sounds like there are something like 5 velocity layers on most of the pianos..

In general, the cheap keyboards have single layer (using only volume and simple filters to create dynamic changes), and higher end models have more layers...but some higher end models (Roland, GEM, some computer-based pianos) use a single layer but add sophisticated modeling to simulate the effect of more layers. Also, even models with layers don't necessarily use the same # of layers everywhere, i.e. they may use fewer layers for the top octave.

Don't mean to hijack, but what's the relevance of this quesion? At the end of the day shouldn't it just be about what instrument feels the best for you? I mean when I played a NS for the first time, I felt inspired and really connected to this instrument and could not get myself to stop playing. Previously, I had tried Ivory, Vienna whatever (in Kontakt), a Yamaha Motif XS, amd other digital pianos. All were pretty good instruments I guess, but just not for me.

I seem to remember the earlier Electro's having a velocity layer that was audible with the Electric pianos. I don't seem to notice it with the newer incarnations of hardware and software programming.

"The sound, the size, the settings, the overall feeling ... I think its a very good competitor as well !" about TruePianos

I do not agree, to my ears True Pianos sounds really plastic and Nord Pianos don't. Competitors in my opinion are Alicia Keys Library for KOntant and a couple more kontakt libraries.. but hey, no way I'm taking a laptop on stage... that was the reason after all I got a Nord... but in the studio, sample libraries are the way to go, for me.