Gambold wrote:RE the Nord Rhodes samples - yes, they are ok. But I think given Nord's pricing, and how good their other samples are, the Rhodes ones are a disappointment. Esp when other companies seem to produce better ones without a problem.
Interestingly, not all sample-based EP technology is equivalent. I was talking with a Korg rep about how, while I really liked the Kronos EP1 engine modeled EP sounds, in some cases I preferred the SV1 sampled EPs, and wondered about the possibility of offering those sounds in the Kronos as well via its HD1 sample based engine. Not that they would be exact, there are other differences, not the least of which is that the SV1 models amps making use of an actual tube. But it turns out that also, the sample-based sound engine in the SV1 (from Korg Italy) is different from the tech used by Korg Japan (for Kronos), each has its own tricks, and in fact, there are some things the SV1 can do in its sample-based system that the generally more capable Kronos actually cannot do with its equivalent, meaning Kronos is just not fully capable of duplicating the SV1 sounds. Which is a long way of saying that there can be more to it than just Nord creating/acquiring better Rhodes samples, other aspects of the design could be a factor as well, in whether they can create a Rhodes sound as good as what's in the {insert board of your choice}. Personally, I'd probably rank Rhodes sounds in roughly this order: Korg, Kurzweil, Kawai, Nord, Yamaha, Roland.
Gambold wrote:As for EQ - any sample that requires a lot of fiddling with the EQ to make it decent is not, to my mind, a good sample. I'm not a big fan of EQ for anything
I have found that EQ helps the EPs a lot. I don't really think "well, it should sound perfect without EQ," I'm okay with having to use the EQ... and in fact, any "real" Rhodes you ever heard probably effectively had some kind of EQ on it. Remember that, like an electric guitar, a Rhodes basically makes virtually no sound until you put it into a playback system, which almost invariably will add its own coloration. One place where the Nord architecture makes things a little complicated, though, is that, once you find an EQ you like for a Rhodes, you have to save it in a program, which means you can't easily grab that Rhodes sound from the front panel on the fly whenever you want, to mix and match with other sounds, whatever... you can only get to it from your recallable preset, and can only use it in conjunction with other sounds by using the more cumbersome copy-and-paste functions to move sounds from one recallable preset into another.
Gambold wrote:I'm not a big fan of EQ for anything, and I've found the most of Nord's pianos and the organs need very little, if any, to sound great.
I think a big difference there is, unlike an EP, a piano does have a "real" acoustic in-the-room sound, as does even a Hammond organ through a Leslie, which is almost always how it's been heard. So there is a known standard for what the "real thing" sounds like, whereas a given Rhodes could sound different depending on what it was being played through. So naturally, Nord's piano samples are designed to sound like a piano in the room, their Hammond emulation has a known target sound of Hammond through Leslie. But except for their "amped" samples (and maybe the Rhodes Suitcase, which came with its own amp/speaker), the EPs are probably raw samples out of their outputs, something no one ever hears when they're listening to an actual Rhodes, and so it's up to additional processing (including EQ) to emulate the rest of the sound, i.e. you're working from a different kind of starting point than when working with a piano sound.
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