Nord User Forum

Hi friends,

I have had the NP3 for 2 years now and I've had this issue since the first day I had this piano but I never gave it a lot of thought.
When I record audio with the focusrite 6i6 2nd gen as an audio interface and audacity as the software used to capture it my audio is softer then expected.

When I play with my Sennheiser HD6XX's directly plugged into the piano the audio is very loud and I have to put the volume of the piano a little below half, but when I have the headphones plugged into the scarlet I have to crank up the audio on the NP3 to max or almost max to get a nice-ish loud/vibrant sound (the sound from the headphones directly plugged in sounds better though). and when I adjust the gain a lot on the scarlet I eventually get soft noise/crackling(Headphone gain), And if I adjust the gain on the front of the 6i6 past 0 I get horrible noise/crackling so I always leave the gain on the input at its lowest.

I'd love to record audio with my headphones plugged into my piano but I have to reduce the volume to below half like I said before, but when I do that the audio is very soft in audacity

I am a novice in the audio space so maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I listen to people on youtube their recordings always sound so nice and loud on my speakers as well as on my HD6XX's but when I play my recorded audio back from audacity it sounds nice on my headphones but soft and kind of weak on my speakers. How come the audio is so soft that I have to crank my speaker volume up a lot to get a decent sound but when I watch vids on youtube of other people with NP3's it sounds so nice?

Also when I try and amplify the recorded audio in audacity it will clip pretty fast so I can't really amplify at all and I'd rather not do it at all.

Any help would be immensely appreciated

I had a similar problem, though in my case I wanted to record my Nord from the line level inputs in the back (inputs 3 & 4 on the Scarlett), which do not have gain control, and I was getting low signal. The solution for me was to get a small mixer to boost the signal into the Scarlett.
nord-stage-forum-f3/boosting-gain-into-audio-interface-t16932.html

From what you’ve written though, it sounds like maybe you are trying to record from the front inputs with the pre-amps? This works just fine for me - with the master volume of the Nord at 75% and the Scarlett gain turned way down I have tons of volume. Some things to check:

- Are the red ‘pad’ lights on? This could be reducing your gain. The front inputs should be set to ‘Instr’ mode.
- Be very careful not to activate the phantom power (48v) with the Nord plugged into the front - this could damage the instrument (edit: or maybe not actually - I think phantom power is only applied to the XLR inputs, not the 1/4”)
- there are additional settings for the Scarlett available with the software control panel

Hi Rajivrocks,

Please read the manual of the Focusrite and/or Audacity about proper recording levels, and how to achieve them, (you should leave some headroom, and youtube video's / how loud it sounds through your monitors or headphones are not the right reference for that)

If you don't like the Focusrite's headphones output, setup monitoring at the keyboard side using a separate headphones amp or small mixer.

Hope this helps..
Albert

Ah thank you both for the advice, Yes I'm recording through the front quarter inch connectors. Red "pad" lights? do you mean the halo around the gain knob? it is set to intr indeed.
And wartaler, Thanks for the suggestions, I figured there isn't much to it settings wise, I put my sample rate to 96khz on the focusrite controller and matched it in audacity and thats about all I have done. But there might be more stuff I need to do so I'll have a look! My friend listened to my recordings and told me it sounds fine and he has a NP3 as well and has a youtube channel where I compare my sound to. So he said it might just be that I'm being extra picky because its my own music that i'm listening to. But I'll definitely have a look and hope I'll find something because it sounds off to me when I listen on my speakers (not on my headphones)

Also I don't mind the focusrite headphone output, its great.
EDIT: Also, what software do you use to record modalmixture ? and also, does the quality of my quarter inch cables matter? they are like 3 meters long or even longer and the piano is like 60cm's away from my 6i6 and they were pretty cheap. But I don't see how that would effect volume.

Hi Rajivrocks,
Making sure you're recording at the right level involves the volume knob(s) of your keyboard, and the input gain knobs and input pads of your focusrite. For both main inputs, the pad light is a small red light below the input gain knob, and right of the green INSTR light, they should be off in your setup.. Use the metering in your software, check the documentation of Audacity on how to interpret the meters. Too high input levels will cause clipping, avoid that at all costs, if you want to apply effects on the track later, leave some headroom, but the level shouldn't be too low either.
Because the Nord Piano doesn't have a separate volume control for the headphones, I'd suggest using the headphones out of the focusrite.
Cheers,
Albert

I Have the 2 ch FocusRite. Remember what you hear through the headphone out on your soundcard, if directly from the instrument, are mono. You are getting left and right channel centered. To get Stereo, you need to pan the channels in your DAW, left fully left and right fully right.
Then turn off the Direct monitor button on your soundcard, and activate the monitor function on each channel in your daw instead.

Another issue might be impedance mismatch. I also have the same headphones like you. They are working great from my Nords, but are unusable on my Crumars. Will test them on my Focusrite tonight.

A bit on the subject here : https://www.head-fi.org/threads/headpho ... re.607282/

Ah Bjokso, with the 6i6 you don't have to do that, but thanks for the advice though!
Also yeah, the pad is off, I tried all the settings before and the pad makes it softer at the time I turned it off and put it in instr. Gonna read the documentation, but listening on my phone it sounds fine (recording) so it might just be my speakers being kind of trash but I refuse to think so. Also yeah I use the built-in headphone output of the focusrite when recording even though I do have to crank the volume up high on my Nord.

I'll start reading the documentation of focusrite and audacity, there must be some explanation or am I just crazy?

Not specifically related to your headphone issue, but noted that your recording at 96kHz.

There is no reason to do this. Its just wasting space disk space and making your CPU/DAW work harder.

In your configuration there will be NO difference in audio quality between 96kHz and 48kHz.