Nord User Forum

[Gambold]

>I fight with myself in wanting more samples ALL THE TIME and yet sticking with 2 or 3 for 98.76% of what I play....<

Indeed. It is an embarrassment of riches. And yet - I believe you are correct that most of them are rarely played, and that the majority of players here, myself included, spend almost all their time using the same one or two.

Which can always be better. The boards are improving...more memory, better features, sometimes better layout...and sampling technology continues to advance. No one here will seriously suggest that the Rain piano is as sophisticated or desirable as the Amber (well, some will, but because they are self-appointed soldiers of the faith, not because they are correct.)

It's not untoward to suggest that for such an important release as the Piano 5, a new Grand be sampled. The Nord Grand was flag-shipped with the White Grand and that was two years ago. Are they really going to use the White again (which as I said, is adequate - I never said "crap" about anything, not my style, anotherscott) - or will they pleasantly surprise us with a Bechstein or a top-line Yamaha concert model?

[Gambold]

>t sure sounds to me like you're saying you're disappointed in all the Nord piano sounds, i.e. they have nothing better than "adequate."<

No, i said the White was only adequate. I didn't comment on any of the other pianos. The White is the only one they would consider as the top choice, since it's the most recent offering...they aren't going to go back to one of the older ones - several of which are superior to the White.

It wasn't that hard to understand.

[anotherscott]

No, i said the White was only adequate. I didn't comment on any of the other pianos. The White is the only one they would consider as the top choice, since it's the most recent offering...they aren't going to go back to one of the older ones - several of which are superior to the White.

Sorry if I misunderstood. Though I still don't really see the point of saying what sounds like "I hope they ship it with something better than the White" if you think they already have something better than the White. I also would not assume that even Nord considers White to be their "top choice"... it is simply their newest. If you think something else is better, Nord doesn't need to "go back" to it, it's still there. Probably already in the board, and if not, certainly loadable.

I think Nord's goal with new releases is not necessarily to provide something unequivocally "better," but rather, to provide something else, something different. "Better" is always going to be somewhat subjective to the player and to the context, after all. Nord's tech is what it is, it's not like we're suddenly going to get multi-gigabyte samples. Microphones and miking techniques haven't really changed. There's not a magic super piano somewhere that they haven't sampled yet. So while there may be little tweaks here and there, I don't really expect to ever see a substantially "better" piano within the current architecture, just maybe something I prefer. (The one exception is that they did try something notably different with the binaural sample, the first one optimized for headphone listening.)

[Gambold]

Hmm, well, I don't know. I think the back end of the piano library has gotten a bit dated and certainly the sample sizes have been leaping up. A cynic might suggest this is to get customers to upgrade their boards, but customers should upgrade their boards anyway - it's electronics, trade up every few years - so I don't think that's the only reason we see jumps in file size. It's just better sampling tech and better samples, and I think the tech continues to improve.

Many would argue here that the White Grand is one of the best engineered samples yet - which would make sense, it's the newest. Older classics that were once praised to the skies, like the Bosendorfer and the now much-maligned Italian, are now considered imperfect. The Bosie has a weak high end, etc.

general-nord-forum-f29/poll-favorite-acoustic-pianos-complete-list-2018-t14957.html

In the above survey the Royal Grand wins by far, since it was then the newest. I'm sure the White would be beating it handily in a more recent poll. The Amber is destroying all comers in the upright class, yet once upon a time the Blue Suede and Black fought it out for top honors. In other words, people still like the Studio Grand 2 and the Mellow upright but with every new release, those pianos fall farther down the faves list and get used less and less. Only the Velvet failed to stay at number 1 on its release, since it sounded like you were playing inside a closet, and needed too much EQ to fix.

The White is ok. It's not the definitive XL Steinway sample some of us were hoping for. It's probably not the best Grand sample currently available in terms of character, although it's the best engineered. I still wait and hope for that one really good Grand that will be as powerful and lasting as the Lady D was during its prime time.

[anotherscott]

I think there is a tendency for people to be favorably biased toward a new one when it comes out.

In my case, I never particularly liked any of the grands until the Grand Imperial came out. At least for solo work.

Mathematically, in any survey comparison over time, the older ones will naturally tend to fall in rank over time, if for no other reason than that there's more competition. If there are five to choose from, each of the five will have some level of support percentage-wise, but if there are subsequently ten to choose from, and the percentages still have to add up to 100, it is a mathematical near certainty that the original five will all fall, unless new ones are unambigously worse!

[CountFosco]

The last 2 pages, talking about piano samples which are already available for current and legacy Electros, Pianos, Stages and the Grand, kind of goes to my point (I remember typing "page 15" so it was probably there). Piano 5 is a strange product release. It brings virtually nothing new - some GBs and the ability to layer or split 2 pianos (a bit of a niche feature). It doesn't have a special keybed, the Grand was the product designed to address that issue. It doesn't fill a market gap, it doesn't add much beyond its predecessor, and it's expensive. I remember asking if there were any takers for this product somewhere in this post (maybe that was page 15), and at page 22, by my back of an envelope calculation, the tally is still zilch. That's very different from the response to the releases of E6, Grand and W2.

[Spider]

I think it’s possible to be pleased but not fully satisfied.

I fight with myself in wanting more samples ALL THE TIME and yet sticking with 2 or 3 for 98.76% of what I play....

In principle, I totally agree with you. But in practice, not only I always use the same 2-3 pianos (what's so wrong about that? Real pianists only use ONE...), but I also found it's really hard for a new sample to enter my setup. I'm not in the "newest is always better" faction, essentially because the "old" samples are all integrated in my programs and setlists. I don't use "generic" sounds, instead I save one program for each song in my setlist. For me, introducing new sounds requires checking every program for every song, adjusting EQ, trying it out with the band and checking if the sound is ok, etc. Lots of work, and the end result may be worse than before.

Also, evaluating a new piano is not so easy if you have an old Nord with limited memory. I have a NS2EX where I leave 100-150 Mb free on purpose, so I can load a new sample and hear it against my "standard" ones. But when I had a Stage 2 with only 500 Mb, that was almost impossible, requiring me to erase one of my "working" pianos and then reload it to go back to my "real" programs. And the process is always slow and tedious between loading, erasing, reloading etc. I did a partial piano shootout only 2-3 times, and a really accurate one (checking ALL the pianos) only once.

So when a new piano comes out, my standard reaction is:
1- A new piano! WOAH!!! YUU-HUUU!!!
2- (............) (weeks or months pass by)
3- I finally find the time and willingness to load and try the new piano
4- uhm....meh...yes, nice, but....
5- I stick to my old programs with the old pianos

Until now, the only pianos that really changed my workflow were the Silver (I was using the Bright for band work and I found the Silver cuts through just as well, but it's much more nuanced and expressive) and the Velvet and Mellow (the only soft pianos in the library, I love them for more intimate songs). I still use the Black as my standard upright, and the Baby, Bambino, Saloon and Honky Tonk for particular character.

The White is good, but it has a weak bass register and lots of overtones I'm not very fond of. Sometimes it sounds almost detuned.
I never liked the Royal 3D or the Italian. I never understood why people find the Amber so special, as well. A good upright, but I find the Black simply better on all respects.
And of course, all of these are purely my impressions, and everyone else's is just as valid and worth hearing.

[Spider]

Piano 5 is a strange product release. It brings virtually nothing new

In general, Nords almost never bring radical changes in the evolution of a product line. Typically more memory, more polyphony and some refinements to the sound engines and effects. Radical new features are usually reserved for totally new product lines, and then maybe ported to their big selling stage pianos.

One could argue that there was "virtually nothing new" in the whole evolution of the Piano, Stage and Electro lines: they mostly added secondary features around a very solid core which always stayed basically the same. Maybe the only real "new" feature was the introduction of non-piano samples, which was probably the biggest shift from their original design philosophy.
The synth product lines were always more varied, with the rather traditional Leads supplemented by the more creative Modulars, Waves, and A1.

It has often been said (and I agree) that new Nord models are not aimed at old Nord players: there is little incentive to upgrade, as new models do not make the previous ones obsolete. Maybe once every 2-3 generations, but surely not at every new model release.
Rather, new models serve to keep the product lines fresh and in the news, to make them attractive for new customers.

[anotherscott]

It has often been said (and I agree) that new Nord models are not aimed at old Nord players: there is little incentive to upgrade, as new models do not make the previous ones obsolete. Maybe once every 2-3 generations, but surely not at every new model release.
Rather, new models serve to keep the product lines fresh and in the news, to make them attractive for new customers.

Yes, this is the point I tried to make earlier in the thread as well.

I remember asking if there were any takers for this product somewhere in this post (maybe that was page 15), and at page 22, by my back of an envelope calculation, the tally is still zilch. That's very different from the response to the releases of E6, Grand and W2.

See above. But also, for the three you mention... the Grand had the new action, and action was perhaps the most frequent criticism of all previous Nords from a piano playing perspective. The W2 was a substantially "all new" design, finally updating the original Wave concept which dated all the way back to 2008. So the larger-than-typical appeal of these to existing Nord users was apparent, they were not the usual, smaller "evolutionary improvement over a somewhat recent model" that most Nords are. As for the E6, though, if that seemed to garner a lot of excitement, I guess the question would be, from whom? Electro is probably Nord's most mainstream model and probably generates more excitement in general, but was the E6 really purchased by lots of E5 owners?

One thing I will say in defense of the NP5 from the perspective of current Nord owners, though, is that I think the 73 may end up having a good deal of appeal, because it is the first non-88 with an above-average piano action since the long gone Nord Stage 2 (which itself was of little interest to the piano-focussed players who did not care about drawbar organ and VA synth, since those unneeded features would have made that board unnecessarily expensive and complicated for their needs).

Along those lines, I mentioned earlier that I thought the Yamaha CP73 was this model's biggest competition, depending in part on what you thought about the actions. Well, I finally got to play a CP73 briefly, and I think Nord will indeed have an advantage here. In many ways, CP73 is a great board, I found it a lot of fun to work with, but I didn't care for its action at all. I think when people can wrap their fingers and hands around them, a lot of people atr likely to prefer the action and sound of the Nord, despite the Yamaha's advantages on paper.

[mangepange]

.. I remember asking if there were any takers for this product somewhere in this post (maybe that was page 15), and at page 22, by my back of an envelope calculation, the tally is still zilch. That's very different from the response to the releases of E6, Grand and W2.

I have ordred the NP5. It will be my first Nord, and replacing my old Roland FP-5. I've been waiting for a new Stage, but since I probably never would use the organ section the NP5 will be great.