Nord User Forum

Hi all!

I am not sure if this is mentioned here before:

Today I took my new NS3 Compact and connected to my Kawai CS-7 with standard MIDI cabel. There was one very nice suprise to me: Nord responded to "silent key press" (very slow keypress which does not produce sound) correctly. I remember well that earlier this did not work. Even if you played your Nord with local off (sending midi to your DAW and back to Nord), you did not get this "silent key" behavior. I don't know about the others but to me this was a serious problem and ruled out any piano MIDI controller with Nord. Now it seems to be corrected. Or at least in my Kawai setup it works like it should. I haven't tested this with DAW and local off. Anyone?

Ok, then some negative too: I can confirm the bug that Compact does not play piano over its range via MIDI. I certainly hope this will corrected with future update! Another thing is that it does not fully support other dynamic pedals but only Nord triple pedal. So if am right you don't get those nice pedal noises with external pedal. Maybe this is business strategy: I think Clavia people know that there are quite good pianos and controllers out there, in fact better than their Fatar-keyboards. Perhaps they do not want to make it easy to buy Electro/Compact and then some controller with it. And finally, I know I am hypersensitive to latency. Kawai --> Standard MIDI cabel --> Nord seems to produce some latency which I feel under my fingers which is not there when you play your Nord itself.

Summa summarum: Silent key behavior is a great improvement to those who consider playing Nord pianos with External MIDI controller. Well, it should have been like that in first place. Pedal and some latency are things to consider as well.

Hi Ecaroh,
I'm one of those who thought about buying a ne5d or ns3 compact and an external controller, namely kawai vpc1.
this is to have the portability of the instrument and the best organ and Piano keybeds.
I am worried about what you wrote, if I understood well I would have three problems:

1- the 88 kawai keys would not sound all of them (very serious!)
2- the three kawai pedals work all but do not reproduce the pedal noise.
3- there is an almost imperceptible latency (have you tried to connect the kawai directly to the nord? do you think it is an inevitable latency in any kind of midi connection?)

I do not want to fight these issues and I'm reconsidering the idea of buying a piano with its own internal sounds.

after experiencing these problems, do you prefer to play the nord from kawai or is it more satisfying to play the kawai with its internal sounds, or play the nord with its keyboard?

thank you

Hi DanieleP,

At least 1 on your list should now be corrected with the newest update. (I haven't yet tested it though...)
Problem 2: As far as I know, only pedal to work with Nord with all the nuances (dynamics, pedal noises) is Clavia triple pedal connected straight to Nord. (I did not test those other two kawai pedals...)
Problem 3: As I said, I am a bit hypersensitive to latency but I felt it clearly. Nord itself is very fast when you play it, Kawai connected to Nord straight with standard midi cabel produces some latency which might bother or not. To me it does.

Hope this helps! Others with Nord and some external controller might comment as well how do they feel about these issues...?