Can the NordStage 4 play programs from an external drive?

[christianjwagner]

Hello jprykiel, I Unterstand your point and your wish, fair enough. Still, this does probably not make much sense from a marketing or product management perspective. Features that are implemented usually follow sufficient demand on the market. I believe your case is maybe one out of 500 (?) so no reason for Nord to change their sample philosophy for that. If this need was a basic desire by many, this would probably be different. Nevertheless, what you would like to achieve can be done by having a backup with you on your laptop, and it will be maybe a thing of 20 min to upload that to your rented equipment. You just need to erase it afterwards. Maybe not the best solution for you, but in my eyes better than most solutions on the market, especially as that rented Stage will basically be an identical clone of your own instrument which is not the worst thing I guess.

[istominmusic]

I bought myself a Nordstage 4 88 a few days ago. At first, of course, I was happy with the sounds. But I was very surprised when it came to working with samples. It's extremely strange!

First of all: backup. Really 1GB of sounds is backed up for more than 80 minutes! That's what????? Where in the Stone Age did anyone use such a speed? I've tried several times to change the sockets of USB connections, but nothing helps! How can such an expensive instrument use such a slow connection?

I read earlier that the NORD uses very fast memory. So where is the speed of this memory if it takes more than an hour to copy from it? Is this an old micro calculator????

Next. I tried to load a piano sound into Nord. The volume is only about 200 MB. I never thought that it would take half a lifetime to load this sound! How is this even possible nowadays? I'll be able to play a concert in that time! At the very least, you should have made a USB Type C 3.2 connection. Then everything would have worked much faster.

Next. I am extremely indignant and disappointed with the memory capacity. I'm sorry, but 1GB of memory for such an instrument is at least shameful! For example, I wanted to install a grand piano with about 200MB. And the program tells me that "not enough memory". Well, I sting another sound in NORD, which takes 200MB. Now the memory should be enough, but for some reason the program tells me that there is still about 79Mb missing..... What kind of math is Nord doing???? It feels like 2+2=3...


And, as soon as I deleted the "big" file - other patches immediately fell away. That's not fair. I think that first of all, if NORD gives a user 1GB of memory, then this 1GB of memory should be fair. That is, all factory sounds should not touch this memory, and this memory should be for additional needs. Otherwise it turns out that I lose a lot of factory sounds. That's not serious.

Next. What are we even talking about... 1GB of memory... Is this serious, in 2024?????
I have a KORG KronosX. I put psd disks in there and I can get dozens of times more memory. And this is an instrument that is much older than Nordstage 4.

If at all we talk about some "magic memory that is inside Nord" and it kinda works "fast"... Nord has only 1GB of such memory....
Keyscape, for example, has a 70Gb key library. And its pianos take much more memory space. And considering all this - even a simple M2 disk can easily cope with the load, which is much bigger than Nord's. And for example a 1Tb disk will cost less than 100$! Even very heavy piano libraries from KONTAKT run fast from such a disk. I absolutely do not understand Nord in this situation. How can a user be given so little memory and work with this memory at an extremely low speed of communication with the computer?

Of course, maybe I don't understand something, maybe I'm wrong. But then correct me.


At the moment I am extremely uncomfortable working with Nord, because in order to load some piano on 150-200Mb I have to break my head to see "what I now have to remove from Nord to load in the new sound... For such a cosmic cost of the instrument it is extremely strange....

[cphollis]

If we were discussing laptops or tablets, you'd have a point. But we're not, and Nord does things their way.

The Nord memory architecture uses a very specialized type of flash memory optimized for fast internal access, persistence and reliability. It's not the same flash memory you'd find on your computer -- it's expensive stuff. Writes take a long time as a result, but it's written very securely and reliably. I don't believe any other major keyboard manufacturer does this.

The transfer rate on and off the main CPU board via USB has never been concern to Nord, but it gets the job done. Backups are cached, making them very quick once you do the first one.

Full restores take a long time, of course. Partial restores take time as well. The good news is that I've never had a Nord fail that way, so I haven't needed it.

What happens in practice is that you end up with a handful of go-to piano voices and samples and usually aren't shuffling things around all the time. I stick with mostly the stock pianos and samples, because I find them the most useful.

[istominmusic]

For example, as soon as I bought a Nordstage 4 88 and plugged it into my computer the first thing I did was archive it. It was extremely slow to create, to say the least. Then I started trying to download the piano, which has a capacity of about 200 MB. And I got a message that there is not enough memory. How's that? If I, the user, should be given 1Gb of memory, but even an additional 200Mb grand piano doesn't fit. At least it's not even right to write in the technical description that 1GB is available to the user, but nobody writes that if this 1GB is cleared, a lot of factory sounds will simply disappear. Personally, I consider this approach to be deception. But okay. I deleted some of the native pianos. I downloaded the one I wanted to listen to. I listened to it. Then I deleted it and downloaded a couple more sounds. But then I decided to put it back in because the native sounds weren't working anymore. I loaded back the sounds (samples) that the native presets required. But it turned out that now I have to manually reconnect the returned piano samples to those presets. This again takes a lot of time. Even if I want to save a bit of memory and return the piano samples in a slightly lower quality (instead of e.g. 200mb - 150mb version), the presets that use this piano will not work again until I fix their connection manually. At the very least it is extremely strange that the NORD operating system does not do this automatically (the user should not have to do it at all). Again a waste of a lot of time.

So, I decided to revert back to the archive copy (which I created when I first connected the tool). I decided that while I was waiting for the restore, I would do my own thing. And how "glad" I was that when I tried to restore the archive copy, I got the message "your copy is corrupted" and as a result nothing could be restored!
When trying to restore native samples that require factory presets - again memory shortage! And finding something that is "extra" is difficult. And as a result, simple things become a puzzle....

Maybe I'm just not used to it and that's why I don't understand a lot of things. But at the moment I'm getting stressed trying to figure it out.
I tried to convert older sounds to Nordstage 3 format with a converter, but the converter didn't accept any of the sounds.

But on the other hand, whatever stress I'm under, there's one thing that saves me. It's a cool NORDSTAGE sound! For the sake of this sound I can bear the stress)

[cphollis]

"Maybe I'm just not used to it and that's why I don't understand a lot of things."

You will have a better experience with your Nord if you make some time to read the well-written manual, and watch a few informative youtube videos.

Basic concept: you have a finite amount of piano memory, and finite amount of sample memory. Think of it as luggage -- you can't carry everything with you and are going to have to make some choices as to what will fit.

Put differently, you can't bring everything with you, and there's no reason why you'd want to.

If making musical choices is stressful for you, perhaps you'd be better off with a preset-centric keyboard or midi set up?

[M_a_c]

Maybe I'm just not used to it and that's why I don't understand a lot of things.

Boah... This a hard ride and the corrupted file even makes it harder. But you already figured out the basic issue:
The Nord handling is quite different to all Keys of Yamaha, Roland, Korg etc, we myabe (or surely) used before.
(...an insight some currently unsatisfied Nord-users will still need some time for...)
Maybe it´s just the users point of view, that needs to be changed, to come along with the Nord-guys concept.

I have to agree with you that this Memory Management is not easy to handle
and I also erased (and sometimes re-loaded) samples and programms to get the memory "sensibly" filled for me.
Currently this seems to be the only way to me and it´s hard work...
I´m still thinking, if I /we did something wrong and mabe simply misunderstood the developers concept.

But - a corrupted file in your work is bombed bridge in the Key-concepting-process
and you have my sincere sympathy with my respect for going on with your Nord...

[M_a_c]

Agree with M_a_c, but also note that backing up the factory loaded content is not necessary since you can always load this from Nord’s web page if you want to set back your Nord to the factory default after you changed it. The only reason to backup your Nord is when you have made personal changes like creating your own programs etc. and want to save it for future restores.

Also please be aware that Nords don’t contain any permanent factory content built into the instrument. The factory default content is like a set of demonstrations of the capabilities of the Nord, helping you to start understanding it and as a base to modify it according to your needs. That’s a major difference in philosophy compared to the “traditional” workstation concepts of the likes of Yamaha, Roland or Korg.

It also helps a lot to read the whole manual before starting to use a Nord, since it explains very well how a Nord works

[jprykiel]

@istominmusic As mentioned in previous messages, the factory patches use the pianos the NordSage was shipped with. So it's normal that they won't sound any more if you delete these pianos from memory.
One of the most useful things I was advised of in this forum is that if you create patches that don't use any pianos, they will still contain a piano. So it's a good idea to select the one that uses the least amount of memory, probably the Clavinet, so they takes less space and time to backup/restore.
Good luck,
JPR

[M_a_c]

Schorsch - just to tell: I backup everything...
I even have a Factory-Setting backup of my Korg Poly61, TritendMKII and Roland D-70 f.e., while I don´t own the keys anymore.
Of course I backuped my Nord-Keys from their own RAM beside the Factory-Preset-Data from the Nord page (that I stored also),
That website data can be disappeared from now to tomorrow (like the Sample Archive 1.0 shortly did).
This is the Internet - you even can´t trust yourself...

@istominmusic As mentioned in previous messages, the factory patches use the pianos the NordSage was shipped with. So it's normal that they won't sound any more if you delete these pianos from memory.

I´d been very careful with each Program tied to the required Samples in my first Nord days. But today, when the SoundManager shows you the requested (or missing) Samples of each Program, it is really easy to load these. It´s a great thing, that you can bundle your Program with its samples. But I have my Sounds organized well and have no issue, when a dedicated program (of what I note what´s in) requires some samples in addtition.

The point is, that you need to know, how the program will sound. Without listening to ALL THE PROGRAMMS AND SAMPLES in your new Nord Key, you won´t even know, there is a program you like. But this is a job the fewest Nord-Key owners would like to spend time in. Here is the reason, I´m busy to assist my local Nord-user collegues with setting their Key their way. I did an EXCEL-Sheet where I commented all those Programs and Samples and if I need a "thin pad with to much modulation in" or a "Phil Collins - In the Air tonight - D-50 Pad" f.e., I will find it in my list and load it. Okay - I´m a maniac, but I ask myself how others Users without this should find their Programs and Samples again after they are erased from the key. With that I like the pre-audio-listening for the Nord Samples - this is great thing for me. Maybe (in a perfect world) there gonna be an option for programs to be pre-listened on the Nord website in the future too - there´re "just" 384 for the NS4 and "some more" for the other instruments and the legacy products...

[M_a_c]

M_a_c,

fully agree re. backups, I do exactly the same - backup everything I create by myself and keep a copy of everything from Nord on my local storage systems, including factory bundles, operating systems, samples etc etc etc… I don’t trust the internet and also not rely on Nord’s web page, for example look at the older samples which were removed as part of their new web page design.

I just wanted to mention that there is no need to backup up a Nord which comes right out of the factory, better try to download the factory bundle from their webpage