Nord User Forum

I'm not fully sure that I have understood what you are looking after. But in any case: If you are talking about "anyone" making a big piano sample for Nords, it's never a a sample for the 2 GB memory of the piano engine - it's always a sample for the sample synth section. Nobody than Clavia Nord themselves can produce piano sound modules - if it's a sampled piano or not. So the limit is always 512 MB for a Grand or a Piano 4.

As Fziegler says, we can only make samples for the Nord SAMPLE library, which is not compatible with the piano section of Nord keyboards.
The largest piano we can use is simply the largest available from Clavia, which currently is the White Grand XL with its 245 Mb.

Of course you can always use the Nord as a controller for multi-Gb software pianos from a computer.

And always keep in mind that self-made samples in the Nord world are always restricted to only one sound per key - which will never help to get a true image of a piano sounding in different velocities:
- no velocity layers,
- no round robin samples.

Which means: Everything's fine for live use as far as you use the piano engine or one or another special sound from the sample synth engine. But if you want to produce your own HQ piano sounds for studio use, don't do all the work for a Nord sample.

Nord's choice of terminology is unfortunate. What Nord calls "piano" memory is better called multi-layer sample memory. As pointed out, single-layer samples don't have a lot of expressiveness.

As an example, there's no reason Nord couldn't create a multi-layer saxophone sound that only played from "piano" memory. There are already more than a few "pianos" that play from single-layer sample memory.

One could surely make larger samples, but not better, because the Sample Editor can’t do multi-layer samples.
As mentioned above.
My guess is that very few will make any effort in sampling bigger samples, with very limited expression possibilitys.

If ever you still have the idea of creating a piano sample for the synth engine of your Grand, watch this:
True Coockoo sampling his old favorite piano - https://www.magentacloud.de/share/xylwfcz5e9

soundsubs wrote:Sorry I wasn't more clear: what is the biggest Piano sample set you're using?
(I was wrong. The largest Piano in the Stage is the While Grand at 266mb)

I'm just wondering if anyone has created a larger Piano that they prefer over the ones built in?

As mentioned, it is currently impossible to create and load their own multi-sampled Piano into the Piano section of any Nord keyboard. Nord has not made this an available option for the end user. We are limited to loading in the samples from Nord's Piano Library. On my NS2 and NS3 I have picked my favorites and loaded the XL versions and then filled it up with as many others that fit, including all the EPs etc. and a few of the uprights and digital grands.