Marnopiako wrote:When I speak to many keyboardist around me they don't buy the new one because they don't want to reprogram.
I'm talking about professional musician that won't or don't have that time to spend so they stick to their old Nord version...
These people advertise the brand on stages every day!!
Isn't THAT a waste of money for Clavia?
If they still have a Nord on stage, even if it's an old one, they are still advertising the brand on stages every day.
This is not at all unique to Nord. How many times do you see a band that's been around a while, and the keyboard player is still playing his old Triton or Fantom, whatever? One reason is, they still work fine, not everyone cares about the latest and greatest. But also, they don't want to lose or have to figure out how to recreate their old trademark sounds, and the newer Korgs/Rolands don't play the old patches. In short, as they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
OTOH, Yamaha came out with a 2.0 update to the Montage this year. Its big feature? Compatibility with patches from Motif XS/XF and MOXF. Smart. Kurzweil has probably been about the best in terms of letting you load old programs into new boards,
I do think a NS2-->NS3 converter is feasible, something that would get you most of the way there on the vast majority of Programs. As has been pointed out, piano and organ engines are almost identical. Heck, even just bringing over a Program's split points and engine assignments for the two slots would be a significant timesaver right there. Bring over the drawbar registrations... they might sound slightly different with the updated organ engine, but it would be close. Maybe they can't bring over exactly which piano you used (could be tricky if the boards have different pianos in them, or even possibly even if they have the same pianos in different order... though those issues would also exist just bringing an NS2 program from one NS2 to another). But even then, just bringing over that it is a grand, or an upright, or an EP, again usually gets you close. Almost every synth parameter in the NS2 has an equivalent in the NS3, except in FM, I think (and again, the caveat about what samples are loaded and where). Again, equivalent synth settings--particularly in combination with one another, as the different controls sometimes interact with each other--won't necessarily get you the same sound, but at least gives you a good starting point. It doesn't have to be perfect for it to be very helpful.
I understand, Nord doesn't have huge resources, and unless such a utility actually persuades a lot of NS2 to trade up, there's not a certain cash return to be had. If that were the stumbling block, my hope would be that they would release the program data formats publicly, and then some users or independent programmers might take on the challenge... though even documenting a file format for "outsider" use may not be a trivial project.
Another issue might be that there are some NS2 functions that just don't exist in the NS3, and a translator and commensurate temptation for NS2 owners to upgrade further publicizes the things the NS3 doesn't do, as NS2 upgraders will think they can convert their programs and then complain... hey, my Dual KB programs don't work right anymore. Some of my clav EQ is missing. My programs rely on different MIDI channels for different instruments, that doesn't work. What happened to the KB/latch function? etc. Maybe Nord just doesn't want to deal with that stuff.