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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jazzfoto » 30 Jun 2018, 08:16

anotherscott wrote:As they say, not everything is about you. ;-)


Well... I thought this was all about people like me ;-)

I was close to buying a used NP3 this winter. But after reading about all the knocking key problems, I hesitated. Also a local music store told me that they had problems with a piano they had sold...

So - I thought I would wait, and that perhaps in a year or so, there would be a NP4. Then suddenly the news about NP4 came around easter.

To me the new features in NP4 is of little value. At the moment the price of a new NP3 is down from 23000 to 18000 NOK, and NP4 will be 25000. But I am willing to pay the extra for NP4 just to be sure that there will be no knocking key problems. I know that if I get an NP3 I will spend a lot of energy listening carefully and worrying about any key problems, whatever s/n.

So I thought that perhaps they released NP4 to get people like me buy a new piano right away :-) (But of course - I see the the other reasons - like standardization across products etc.)

PS! I know there are a lot of happy NP3 users without any problems that we do not hear much from in this forum.
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced


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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby maxpiano » 30 Jun 2018, 08:35

There is no apparent change on the NP4 that would affect or remove the “knocking keys problem” (if it is really such a problem), the NP4 keybed and chassis are still the same.
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby NordIOW » 30 Jun 2018, 10:17

Exactly my point! They have used the same fatar Keybed in the NP4! The NP4 should have at least had a better Keybed and the "Ivory Keys" that was dropped last minute from the NP3. Wow this sounds like a really whiney reply

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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jazzfoto » 02 Jul 2018, 10:18

Hmmm…. I kind of know this, but my theory has been that Clavia will be extra careful to ensure that there will be no problem with "knocking keys” on NP4.

However - if there really are no differences between 3 and 4 (keybed wise), maybe I should reconsider. It is tempting to just go and get an NP3 right away...
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jefsco » 02 Jul 2018, 16:39

jazzfoto wrote:Hmmm…. I kind of know this, but my theory has been that Clavia will be extra careful to ensure that there will be no problem with "knocking keys” on NP4.

However - if there really are no differences between 3 and 4 (keybed wise), maybe I should reconsider. It is tempting to just go and get an NP3 right away...

nord not engineering the proper space and or cushioning, in the base, for the keybed selected was the cause of the “knocking keys”.
same case and keybed is used in the piano4.
you would have to assume they are using the same solution to the “knocking keys” that is used in the later piano3.
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jb1979 » 04 Jul 2018, 21:24

Hello

I used to have a Nord Piano 88 but sold it unfortunately. Today I need a new stage piano, for playing acoustic and electric piano sounds. I am investigating 2 solutions: the Nord Piano 3/4, or a master keyboard like the Kawai ES110 + tone generators (a kind of lighter, less expensive, more open Nord Stage, but it requires some work).

Here are the 2 things I don't like so much on the Nord Piano 1/2/3:
a) the black keys are slightly too short (well you can get used to it; and I like this kind of fast, percussive keyboard action anyway, I never understood the point about heavy, sluggish actions)
b) there is only one velocity layer for the upper notes, I mean the MIDI velocity only changes the sample player level, not the sound; I am not 100% sure but I remember it is the same for the lower notes, at least for some sounds.

Anybody knows if the Nord Piano 4 corrects the second problem? Or maybe, do the newest piano sounds fix it?

Despite this, last time I checked, I still preferred the Nord Piano 3 to other top stage pianos (but this is subjective)

Thanks for your help!
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jdwosh » 04 Jul 2018, 22:37

I don't think a) is accurate. I measured my black and white keys on my Yamaha C2 acoustic grand. Black keys are 3.5 inches/white keys are 6 inches. The keys on my Nord Piano 3 are identical. There is no "too short" black key issue. There may be other keybed issues on the NP3/NP4, but key length is not one of them.

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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jb1979 » 04 Jul 2018, 23:29

jdwosh wrote:I don't think a) is accurate. I measured my black and white keys on my Yamaha C2 acoustic grand. Black keys are 3.5 inches/white keys are 6 inches. The keys on my Nord Piano 3 are identical. There is no "too short" black key issue. There may be other keybed issues on the NP3/NP4, but key length is not one of them.

Thanks for this! I uploaded an image so that we are talking about the same thing. Initially I thought the L distance was too big on the NP3, but I must be wrong.

On your Yamaha C2 and the NP3, L = 6-3.5 inches = 2.5 inches = 63.5 mm.

But on my upright, L = 58 mm = 2.28 inches, and on all my other keyboards (MIDI master keyboards and Rhodes Mk1), L is between 56 and 57 mm = between 2.2 and 2.24 inches. This is why I said the NP black keys were "slightly too short".

So maybe this is different on grand pianos, and in this case Nord/Clavia made the right choice. I just hope I have an acoustic grand piano one day!

Anyway, this is really a minor problem, maybe I should not have mentioned it, sorry for the confusion
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby baekgaard » 05 Jul 2018, 00:35

Regarding the length of the black keys, the Nord Piano and Stage with HA88 keys are very similar to my Grand Piano here (which is a 90 year old danish baby grand).

If I measure from the innermost visible part of the key (furthest away from the pianist) to a) the top of the black key ending, b) to the bottom of the black key ending, and c) to the end of the white key, I get 94, 100 and 151mm on my grand piano (thus your L is 57mm) and on the Nord HA88 keyboard (stage and piano) they are 93, 101 and 152 (which means your L is 59mm). The main difference is really in the angle of the black keys nearest the piano player. The keys themselves are almost identical in length, measured from the innermost part. The SW keys on the NE6 (and the NS3 also, I guess) are somewhat shorter. I don't know what the HP keys are.

So I'd say they are pretty much the same as a real grand, give and take a mm (1/25th of an inch).

As for the number of velocity layers, I don't know where you got the impression that there is only one in the upper range. I just measured it here, and it is not correct. There is a little bit more than half the velocity layers found in the middle section of the keyboard -- i.e. significantly more than one sample only! At least this is the case with the Royal Grand, but I think many other samples share very similar characteristics. I compared the top F to the middle F -- the next-highest F has a number of layers in between the two, as expected.

Anyone that has the time can measure this, so feel free to reproduce my experiment (just record all velocity levels and do a statistical correlation -- after having aligned the samples with a cross-correlation first -- between all the sample values, do a 2D plot, and watch the "chessboard" and see how many layers there are) :geek:

So I'm afraid there is no reason for you not to buy a NP3/NP4 :-)
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Re: Nord Piano 4 introduced

Postby jb1979 » 05 Jul 2018, 01:20

baekgaard wrote:As for the number of velocity layers, I don't know where you got the impression that there is only one in the upper range. I just measured it here, and it is not correct. There is a little bit more than half the velocity layers found in the middle section of the keyboard -- i.e. significantly more than one sample only! At least this is the case with the Royal Grand, but I think many other samples share very similar characteristics. I compared the top F to the middle F -- the next-highest F has a number of layers in between the two, as expected.

I got this impression from playing my Nord Piano 88 long time ago, and the Nord Piano 3 recently in a shop, with the Italian Grand Piano sample. It was the grand piano sound I was using with my NP88, and the default grand piano available on the NP3 from the shop. I am talking about the 8 last notes really (F to C). When playing pianissimo it sounds like forte with the level turned down. I did not measure anything, I just played and listened. But perhaps the actual piano they sampled was voiced this way (a bad, though popular practice, even on good pianos), so even with many velocity curves it would not change anything. Anyway your test with the Royal Grand shows the NP engine can manage several velocity curves even for the most extreme registers, which is great.

So I'm afraid there is no reason for you not to buy a NP3/NP4 :-)

Thanks to the help from this forum, no, not really, besides price perhaps, because I am not very rich, but I need a professional tool for my work so maybe I don't have the choice.
At least for digital acoustic piano, I cannot really imagine something better except using a small desktop computer like the Mac Mini (screen-less of course) or something similar. For electric pianos and organs, the GSi Gemini is a strong alternative but it is impossible to test it here.
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