General Discussion of the Nord Stage (EX), Nord Stage 2 (EX), Nord Stage 3, and Nord Stage 4 Synths, FAQ, Troubleshooting etc.

Re: Setting Up the Stage 3 for Piano Sounds

Postby cphollis » 09 Apr 2021, 16:23

Hi MIchael. Welcome. Nord piano voices can sound awesome, inspiring, etc. But it takes some effort, experimentation and careful listening along the way. The keyboard brings raw piano samples of some really beautiful instruments.

You're responsible for what happens after that. And you're not the first person here on the forum who's saying "hey, I just plugged my fancy Nord piano in and it sounds like @ss". Don't worry, I've played Nords in reverb-heavy worship settings, and they can sound downright inspirational. Done right, much better than a mid-grade acoustic grand piano.

I'm going to focus on high-probability problem areas you might want to investigate? Some have been mentioned above.

-- Failing to pan left and right channels left and right. You're left with a sound that's more flat and lifeless, but not awful.

-- You sound like you're playing in a large bathtub. You are. Reverb is emphasizing the mids and attenuating the highs. Use the "bright" filter and select brighter piano voices as a first step. More steps are possible if needed.

-- Make sure the effects section is turned off. You don't want keyboard reverb on top of room reverb.

-- Bad cables, DI, bad unit, etc. Unlikely, but certainly possible. If these were failing, it wouldn't be subtle. A DI is a DI for the most part unless we're getting picky.

Going deeper, you may want to compensate for the fact you don't have a real acoustic instrument sitting as a point source on stage anymore, so you've lost that directional live audio effect. I've compensated sometimes by bringing along a small 8" self-powered PA unit (or a small Bose tower) and placing it at piano level a few feet behind the piano, facing the audience. At low levels, it helps recreate that specific ambience and helps to overcome reverb. As a bonus, I can control the EQ and levels if needed :)

BTW, much of this advice is not Nord-specific. You'd want to make similar adjustments with most any digital piano.
Last edited by cphollis on 09 Apr 2021, 16:25, edited 1 time in total.
I think I have gear issues ....

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Re: Setting Up the Stage 3 for Piano Sounds


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Re: Setting Up the Stage 3 for Piano Sounds

Postby Mr_-G- » 09 Apr 2021, 22:07

Afghanza wrote:I work at a pro audio rental company. We use top grade equipment but we also have some cheaper stuff. To suit everyone’s need. We have had some Behringer active DI’s and there’s a difference in sound quality compared to BSS or Klark or Radial. Most important to us as a rental company is durability. The Behringer stuff is a lot cheaper but also less reliable.
So maybe a prober working Behringer DI won’t make that much of a difference to the sound. But because they break more easily, and have a bigger chance of working not properly they can affect the sound if it has a loose solder contact or half broken print.
I didnt mean to bash Behringer, the word ‘crap’ was poorly chosen. For us as a pro audio rental company it just won’t do.


Thank you. As I said, I am not defending nor criticising any brand, but I am really interested in an objective (i.e. quantitative) measure of degradation of sound in *passive* DI boxes, for example with a spectral analyser type of approach.
A lot seems to be claimed about "good" and "bad" boxes and theories on the winding method of the isolation transformer and how they do not change the sound, or if they do how it is "desirable" soft distortion and all that. Yet I have not found anything that is particularly convincing, it seems to be "all talking".

Edit: typo
Last edited by Mr_-G- on 10 Apr 2021, 13:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Setting Up the Stage 3 for Piano Sounds

Postby peteques » 09 Apr 2021, 22:43

Hi there and welcome to the forum.

Can I quickly ask - did you set the Nord up at home first and if so - were you happy with the sound there? If you were, how did you hear it - headphones or monitors? So then back in church - set up in the same way - it will obv sound different due to the acoustics - but does it still sound ok? If all is OK, then plug into sound system again - any good? I have done exactly the same - as in replaced Grand piano at church with Nord and like you were unimpressed at first. I found this was mainly due to the fact I was so used to the acoustic sound and as has been mentioned, the way the sound is produced between digital piano/acoustic is very different. The sound from our Grand and very probably yours was very different, very immanent and kind of all encompassing, whereas digital sound depends on speaker position, direction, number, foldbacks etc.

Cphollis gave a great and informative answer btw and I'm prob repeating much of what he said - in fact I did exactly what he said by using an 8inch PA unit to 're-create' that acoustic sound. In fact in my church which is nowhere near as large as yours (seats maybe 150), I use 2 small units, left and right of the Nord mainly as monitors for me as I find it really difficult to rely on the sound from the church sound system. Friends of mine also use in-ear monitors which are a good option (I just dont personally get on with them- or they dont get on with me lol).

Also, really concentrate on the piano sample that you like the most. For example I really wanted to like the Imperial, but still I'm not keen. The White Grand is amazing if you have it (imo).

But persevere, I know that most of us here are biased (as most of us own Nords), but they are amazing when you finally get them right.
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Re: Setting Up the Stage 3 for Piano Sounds

Postby analogika » 10 Apr 2021, 01:46

We had a case on a job last year where a DI box (actual name brand, NOT Behringer) was actually wired up out of phase. THAT was awesome. I had a mono bass patch on at one point and it was splitting my head in half (in-ear monitors). FoH tech summed to mono to test when I suggested there might be a phase issue, and it actually completely cancelled out.

Tried around several DI boxes, and it turned out that the DI box itself had been mis-wired internally, apparently.

Never seen THAT before…
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