Stage 4 Owners - Any impression?

[JackD]

Hi,

I believe that some of us already have the NS4.
Any impression to share? Good and Bad things that maybe were not highlighted on YouTube promotional videos?

[superbender]

Hi,

I believe that some of us already have the NS4.
Any impression to share? Good and Bad things that maybe were not highlighted on YouTube promotional videos?

I have a NS4C since Thursday. Yesterday evening and today in the morning I started the learning journey. First I want to answer some questions which we discussed in different chats.

1. Sustain Pedal: I realized that my Roland DP-10 sustain pedal now works with the Nord Stage 4 (pedal type "Nord SP-1"). It did not work with the Nord Stage 3. I also tried the Kawai F-10H and it worked also after switching to pedaly type "Nord SP-2".
2. Program View: If you press the button you can see all 7 selected sounds. This is really nice. May be it was also on the NS3C and I did not see that.
3. Song Mode: There is really no song mode available. The preset function is very helpful to be fast in creating new programs. Also Layer Scene II helps me.
4. Layer Scene II: With Layer Scene II you only can uses the exact same sounds.

My first impressions with the instruments are the following. Please be aware that I had the Nord Stage 3 Compact (my first Nord) only for three weeks and then returned it and waited to get the NS4C. So I don´t have so much history with nord.

• I think the keybed of the NS4 Compact feels better than on the Nord Stage 3 Compact.
• It is very easy to handle the instrument if you had a Nord before. And I enjoyed playing it the last hours. In addition I can now sell the Yamaha Modx7, which sounds very good with headphones and bad over a PA.
• "FX Focus" and "Follow Focus" helps to handle the Layer Effects very well.
• The LEDs for the draw bars are so helpful. With Nord Stage 3 I had to look on the screen and may be I was to old to see it that fast.
• In the current version of NSM 7.70 it was not possible to load NSMP-Files, which is possible on the Nord Piano 5. Hopefully they will fix this soon, as I used a lot of those files, which I can find in this awesome forum.

I will give more impressions in the next days. You can also ask questions which I try to check then - if I am able to configure it on the NS4C.

[DanielD71]

First of all sorry for my English....

Short impressions after three hours of playing. I had up to here all Nord Stages 88: 1, 2, 3 and now 4.
- The keyboard is better than that of the 3, also in combination of KB touch and Dyn Comp results in a different feel, which is certainly good in the band context.
- The new panel layout is clearly better, the scene concept gives me more possibilities than before and saves me thereby a few programs.
- The presets are just great, very many, very useful presets that serve as inspiration and starting point for your own presets.
- For me as an 88 user, the new drawbars are a lot of fun.
- Reverb sound significant better
- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.
- Undo function great, solo and Section Edit great

[JackD]

First of all sorry for my English....

- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.
- Undo function great, solo and Section Edit great

The new volume control for layers is something that I’m worry about.
You cannot simply modify it without the risk to get a spike in the layer volume. Would you check if pressing the “monitor” button + moving the volume fader would help?

[DanielD71]

...- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.

Thanks for your assessment and also noting this point we hope Nord can improve with a future OS update. It appears the only (inconvenient) workaround at this point is moving the sliders to the positions indicated by the program before playing the related layers.

[DanielD71]

...- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.

Thanks for your assessment and also noting this point we hope Nord can improve with a future OS update. It appears the only (inconvenient) workaround at this point is moving the sliders to the positions indicated by the program before playing the related layers.

But if new need multiple programs for the same song, seamless will work but the level faders won’t be at the right place for the next program.

[JackD]

...- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.

Thanks for your assessment and also noting this point we hope Nord can improve with a future OS update. It appears the only (inconvenient) workaround at this point is moving the sliders to the positions indicated by the program before playing the related layers.

The “monitor” button pressed, while moving the fader should be a valid workaround in theory… let’s see!

[WannitBBBad]

...- My main criticism is the thing with the new volume controls, because the current value is displayed but the slider, of course is not at the position. And you can hear that when I want to change it.

Thanks for your assessment and also noting this point we hope Nord can improve with a future OS update. It appears the only (inconvenient) workaround at this point is moving the sliders to the positions indicated by the program before playing the related layers.

But if new need multiple programs for the same song, seamless will work but the level faders won’t be at the right place for the next program.

It would be worth testing. On my NS3 if I hold the sustain pedal down while playing a chord, switch to another program, and then change any parameters, it doesn't affect the sound from the prior program, so it's possible that folks will be able to pull up the next program and adjust levels before playing. It's inconvenient at best, and I hope Nord offers us some options in the future to address it.

[MartinJ2EX]

The only logical solution would be an update to allow fader and knob value pickup
This is why Stage 3 kept the endless rotary knobs I guess.

[JackD]

I way going to buy the NS4 a few days ago…
But I see there are still many points to clarify, and I am also a lot concerned about the new Synth.
In theory is fine, but I really love the NS3’s one