Nord C2D Pipe Organ - a review for fussy pipe organists

[Ohnepiston]

I have now bought me a C2D!! However, the pipe organ i very distorted, both through my headphones and the temporary speakers I'm using. Both the speakers and my headphones aren't the highest quality stuff on the market, but they work VERY well playing music via Spotify and the B3 organ in the Nord. How come only the pipe organ is distorted? Does anyone know?

Are all the pipe organ stops uniformly distorted? (i.e., is the Octava 4 distorted just as much as the Gedackt 8, etc, etc)?

[Rob123xyz]

I too am about to pull the trigger on a C2D and MIDI pedalboard. I have an interest in Jazz, Blues and especially classical pipe organ. Going back decades, I pondered/fantasized about putting together a pipe organ practice setup: two MIDI keyboard manuals and a pedalboard all hooked up to a couple of rack samplers. The price for a makeshift setup was rather high. The price for an Allen or other ready-made digital pipe organ was even higher. The pedalboard was the most expensive piece for many years, with a quality board going for many thousands of dollars. So I held off.

But now, things have changed. The C2D appears to offer credible voices and a credible dual manual keyboard—at a very reasonable price. And you can get a decent pedalboard for under two grand (or so I perceive). What would have cost me probably ten grand in the 1980’s (in today’s dollars) and been a veritable kluge, would today cost me maybe less than half that, and be a rather elegant setup (comparatively).

I have a bunch of guitars and basses sitting around that I rarely play, and am pondering selling/trading toward a C2D and pedalboard. But then I saw the thread about Nord maybe having an upgrade (C3?) secretly on the drawing board: maybe with pistons and/or motorized drawbars, and maybe other pipe-friendly features (another volume pedal jack?) and I wonder should I hold off. I appreciate the discussions in this user forum.

[tacitus]

I must be an organ geek as I got to the end of the original post. I agree with pretty much all of that, and it is a great practice organ, effectively thrown in for free with the Hammond and Vox organs (and the Farfisa for the two guys who wanted that). That said, I’ve used it live and, just like using a Hammond clone, 99.something% of people don’t know the difference. I use PA rather than hi-if speakers, with sub and satellites, and once in a church acoustic, some of the sounds that sound a bit crummy on headphones sound more natural (this is in a 13th century village church in England). But of course, the times I need the trumpet solo are few, and after the few basic stops on the church’s own organ, it’s bracing in a medicinal sort of way (small doses work best). I’ve not run into polyphony problems, but tend to use it as a baroque organ, not a romantic one.

Overall, I think you get an organ like most real ones, where there are nearly always a couple of stops that don’t get used much, for any sort of reason but often because they go badly out of tune, or they’re too loud to integrate in most registrations.

My next project is to get a worship band together, and I’ll probably be in Hammond mode for that. But nice to know a touch of a button brings back the pipe sounds. Or I might use a piano module...

The few organists I’ve talked to about the Nord have decided it doesn’t work before they’ve tried it themselves, but when you can actually carry the thing one-handed, and get it and its speakers in a small car, they are rather missing the point!

[Johnpersson]

I have now bought me a C2D!! However, the pipe organ i very distorted, both through my headphones and the temporary speakers I'm using. Both the speakers and my headphones aren't the highest quality stuff on the market, but they work VERY well playing music via Spotify and the B3 organ in the Nord. How come only the pipe organ is distorted? Does anyone know?

Are all the pipe organ stops uniformly distorted? (i.e., is the Octava 4 distorted just as much as the Gedackt 8, etc, etc)?

Actually it's pretty much only the 8' stops (mostly flutes, but principals and 4' flutes are also a little distorted at times...) And whenever I play more than one note in the pedals. The distortion is like a flickering sound, and it sounds just like it's my speakers who cant handle the samples ALTHOUGH they work fine with hauptwerk + the distortion is there no matter at what volume I play....

[Ohnepiston]

Based on the distortion you've described --- mediocre speakers but they work fine with Hauptwerk, only the sampled pipe organ seems affected (i.e. NOT the B3/Vox/Farfisa emulations) and the distortion happening at any volume --- I'm out of ideas.

In cases of unwanted distortion I always check speakers, cables, and connections; then I rule out electrical interference (ground loops, etc) --- after that, the fix isn't usually something I can do on my own.

[sweelinck]

I have a Nord C2, not the C2D, so this may not be applicable. Overall, I like the sampled pipe organ sounds alot. My main complaint is that the difference in volume between the swell and great sometimes limits the registrations I can use, but it nonetheless may be true to the organ that was sampled.

I also use it as a 2-manual midi controller, sometimes layering pipe organ sounds with other sounds to experiment. I also use an Alesis QSR module for its harpsichord sound, which is similar in quality to the dedicated Roland digital harpsichords of the late 1980’s.