Nord User Forum

Hi,

isn’t this basically the same issue which mentioned in your other thread here? https://www.norduserforum.com/nord-stage-forum-f3/master-clock-led-blinking-dimly-under-certain-conditions-t19000.html

That's interesting. I'll have to see if I can see any of that with either of my NS3 Compact units. There's a part of me that thinks that may just be something like "afterglow" from other LEDs bleeding into the ones not turned on, possibly?

Hi, I have this on both my NS3C and my NS3-88, but it appears on LEDs only which are next/very close to an other LED which is switched on. It looks like a dimmed LED, but it's clearly a reflection of the light emitted by the activated LED. When switching off this activated LED the "dimmed" light of the other LED disappears as well

My Nord Stage 3 Compact has the old panel, revision v2.0.0

My Nord Stage 3 88 has the new panel, revision B v5.1

I would go and visit your dealer or another shop who has a Nord Stage 3 on display and see if it shows the same thing, to see whether it's really a specifi issue to your instrument or if it's kind of normal behaviour

The ghosting your seeing is caused by a small amount of leakage current in the LED display matrix circuitry. It really shouldn't be there, but its also not something I would be overly concerned about. Its very probably present in a lot of units and there is no guarantee it wouldn't be present in a replacement keyboard.

On the other hand, Nord really should be responding to you with a proper answer.

Hi,
thanks for your video. This is just one of the hard to avoid "dark sides" of digital electronics.

What we can see in your video and as you wrote, is, it needs to be dark to recognise the ghosting LEDs. Under daylight you probably won't see much if anything.

Technically spoken the ghosting happens because a little excessive voltage appears across the two pins of a LED. These are probably just a few 100 mV, which is the order or residual variations e.g. on the internal ground-wiring. (The circuit on the other pin has an impact too, but let's keep it "simple".)

Ideally there would be a big ground plate inside the NS3 where alle internal ground connections are connected to in a central (star-like) way. For geometrical and economic reasons you simply can't do it - just think of 10 internal modules which have to be connected somehow. Instead you'll have a distributed ground-network, which is far from the ideal zero-ohms impedance. Hence you'll have effects as you filmed.

Digital electronics, especially in power horses like the NS3, create so much rumbling noise on the ground-network (and on the internal supply lines and somewhat on the internal signal lines), that's it's close to infeasable to reduce them all in any of the myrads of operating situations.

Now, even if you use the same LEDs as a manufacturer, there still is some variation amongst them. Some will need little and some will need higher voltages (a few 10 mV - 100 mV) to give the same amount of light. So from NS3 to NS3 ghosting can appear on different LEDs, ranging from "none to report" to "yes, but in a different pattern".

So in summary I'd consider it more of a "cosmetic problem". It's nasty, it doesn't really hurt and it's technically hard to avoid.

(However, from my professional background I'd offer willing companies assistance. Tiny changes in design can have big effects, and most systems do have the potential to perform much better. However, engineers forgot how to do it or can't care about this. And no, time and effort are just no arguments: They are only valid, if engineers do, what everybody does. Which isn't bad, but many times is not enough. And no, I have no relations with Clavia Nord

Hlaalu wrote:THAT is the kind of answer I wish I had gotten from Clavia. Thank you so much!

You're welcome Happy having helped you along

BTW, your wood-example is an excellent alanogy.

My Stage 3 "ghosted" for a while -- random flickering of LEDs and other displays. The sound didn't change when this was happening, but geez it was annoying in the middle of a gig. So I changed out all of my cables (audio, MIDI, pedals) as well as started to use a regulated power supply.

I can't tell you which specific action cured the problem, only that it's not a problem anymore. Bottom line, I convinced myself it wasn't the Nord, it was something the Nord plugged into that was causing the problem.