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Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby jkostera » 14 Jun 2020, 20:47

Has anyone else been disappointed here by the Wave2 in the flesh? I’m absolutely astounded at how crap it is in certain respects compared to the recent Nord output. Coming off of the brilliant NS3C my expectations were pretty high but the W2 left a lot to be desired.

Here’s what I’ve run into in roughly a week with this thing:

[*]Drifting master clock (counter-tested with different gear including my NS3C)
[*]Generally, there's a boatload of bugs that occur all the time (not even the latest patch seemed to have fixed these), I've had so many instances of the instruments going haywire, hanging notes/chords, inexplicable effects behaviour etc
[*]the presets feel as an afterthought compared to any other nord I’ve used
[*]vastly inferior detune settings (PARTICULARLY salty about this one since I used to use this a lot on my Stage)
[*]some of the ways Drive & Reverb effects seem to affect the sound are imho much less nuanced compared to the A1 / Stage

This is about the 7th Nord I’ve used extensively & overall, I’m really disappointed & surprised that this is what we got for a second iteration of a great synth. Let me know what you think)
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Anyone also disappointed by the W2?


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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby DJKeys » 14 Jun 2020, 23:27

Hi, JKostera-

I for one am not disappointed at all. I think the Wave 2 is a really logical and well-thought next step in the product line.

Here are my thoughts on your comments:

Master Clock-Have not tested it, but use it for a number of time-based arpeggiator patches and never noticed any drift.

Please let us know the bugs you are experiencing, as I have spend 40-50 hours with the instrument and have not encountered them. I did have a couple of hung notes but not since 1.10.

I agree that user presets are not fantastic and probably not meant to be. Getting a unit to market in a certain time frame shortens programming time. I kept about 80 of them and deleted the rest. Even in my Stage 3 I deleted all of them before I started programming patches. So far I have not used a single factory preset in either instrument.

I think the Layer detune settings are excellent. In fact in my opinion they are the best of any of the six Nord instruments I have had. You have a different experience, though.

I also agree that the drive and reverb could be better, but I have the opposite opinion, that the drive is too nuanced and does not affect the sound as much as it does in my NS3. I think the Cathedral reverb is something I would pretty much never use, would prefer two Stage reverbs like the NS 3.

-dj
Last edited by DJKeys on 14 Jun 2020, 23:41, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby 7thheaven » 15 Jun 2020, 13:04

I LOVE Nord keyboards, however I had to return my Wave 2.
The weight of the keys were really hard on my hands. I was actually having a hard time playing this key bed.
The Sound Presets did seem like an after thought. The initial string pad was excellent, many others were lacking.
I felt the price was high for this keyboard.
I hope they fix the keyed for version 3.
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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby tsss27 » 18 Jun 2020, 21:46

What is the difference between the detune on the S3 and W2? I would think they'd be roughly the same.
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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby DJKeys » 18 Jun 2020, 23:05

Unlike the Detuned oscillator function in the NS3 (which does have a limited range of fattening the sound) the W2 allows each layer to be detuned up or down + or - 50 cents. Extremely useful-

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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby tsss27 » 20 Jun 2020, 04:49

Ok, so just to clarify, because the Stage 3 cannot do this... Can I load one of the shape oscillators and also detune this by a custom amount (within that range, of course) or is the detune still limited to certain oscillator types. That was one of my biggest issues with the NS3 synth, you couldn't have precise detune if you wanted to do anything else with that oscillator.
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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby DJKeys » 20 Jun 2020, 05:39

The detune function is available for all of the engines, Analog waveforms, Wavetable, FM and Samples.

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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby tsss27 » 20 Jun 2020, 05:45

That's excellent. One of my three issues preventing me from buying the NW2 is gone. :)
I don't know if the other 2 will ever be addressed (poly glide and more than 1 destination at once for the LFO) but the second one can at least be worked around with external gear if nothing else.
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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby DJKeys » 20 Jun 2020, 16:47

I doubt it will ever have polyphonic aftertouch (very few keyboards do) but I can say that I have programmed about 80 patches in the NW2 and don't find the single LFO per layer very limiting. This keyboard is not aimed at sound design (although it holds its own) but at live performance-

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Re: Anyone also disappointed by the W2?

Postby tsss27 » 20 Jun 2020, 18:30

Polyphonic glide (portamento,) not aftertouch. That's a whole different ball game, very few synths can physically generate poly AT and I wouldn't hold that against the Wave. Poly glide is nice for the big polysynth stab-type patches among other things.

For me it is less about 1 LFO and more that it can only affect one destination at a time. For example on most synths I program a lead that has different amounts of filter and pitch mod on the LFO for a more natural vibrato. I had never considered that to be a deep sound design feature as most every synth can do it.
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