Can the NordStage 4 play programs from an external drive?

[jprykiel]

Hello,
one thing I've been waiting for, and which has not happened yet in the North keyboard line, is to be able to play programs from an external drive.
Currently, if you go to a gig and play on a rented Nord stage, you have very little time to load your sounds using a computer and the Nord Sound manager, even less time when the gig is over to delete your personal data including samples from the instruments.
Has this been improved in any way with the Nord stage 4?
Thanks,
JPR

[jprykiel]

No, unfortunately the Stage 4 still requires the use of Nord Sound Manager to load what you need. As with the current Stage 3, the more your programs utilize the "stock" pianos and synth samples provided by Nord, the quicker you'll be able to load your bundle. To the extent you use your own samples, the NS4 does have some available sample space without needing to delete some samples first like with the Stage 3. Good luck to you.

[jprykiel]

Is this a technical impossibility, or just something they haven't thought of?

[cphollis]

Is this a technical impossibility, or just something they haven't thought of?

The former, not the latter. Nord uses a special kind of expensive flash memory that enables fast, direct access for large samples. That was a huge deal back in the day, as all their competitors had long load times for their samples, while the Nord could instantly change sounds due to the speed of the flash memory.

Could Nord redesign all their products to use more commonly available external flash storage? Sure, at great expense. But why?

I will say, if you're going to use captive storage, you better damn well have a fast interface to get data on and off of it, and that makes their retro USB implementation all the more painful.

[jprykiel]

Well, the solution is to travel with my own NordStage, but that can be costly nowadays. I'm just concerned by leaving some of my precious samples in a rented instrument, because there will definitely be no time to remove them after the concert, especially if it's a festival, you know what I mean.

[Valpurgis]

Hello,
one thing I've been waiting for, and which has not happened yet in the North keyboard line, is to be able to play programs from an external drive.
Currently, if you go to a gig and play on a rented Nord stage, you have very little time to load your sounds using a computer and the Nord Sound manager, even less time when the gig is over to delete your personal data including samples from the instruments.
Has this been improved in any way with the Nord stage 4?
Thanks,
JPR

Which other keyboard line makes it easy to operate your samples and programs on a unknown, leased unit from an external drive without complications or tedious configuration?

[jprykiel]

Good point @Valpurgis, but does the fact that it hasn't been done before mean that it cannot be done?

[Hlaalu]

As others have said, this isn't so much something that "could be done" but nobody does it, it's rather something that's too vague in principle to be implemented in reality.

It's like saying: "I want to teach this person to be able to drive my own vehicle when I lend it to him", without saying if that "vehicle" is an aerobatic airplane or a bicycle down a mountain. They require different skill sets, how can you expect the teacher to teach that person "general" vehicle-driving skills, when there isn't such a thing?

Maybe that was too imaginative a metaphor, but hopefully you get what I mean...

Nord programs and sounds aren't even mutually compatible between different hardware iterations of the same board. How can they be expected to be intelligible if they're coming from an unknown source?

[neomad]

Well, the solution is to travel with my own NordStage, but that can be costly nowadays. I'm just concerned by leaving some of my precious samples in a rented instrument, because there will definitely be no time to remove them after the concert, especially if it's a festival, you know what I mean.

Just do a factory reset when leaving the instrument...

[jprykiel]

@Hlaalu, all I was hoping is to be able to store Nordstage programs, nothing else, to a drive and then plug the drive into any NordStage of the same generation, and… Just play. I'm not saying it is easy, it's just a wish.
Best,
JP