Nord User Forum

thank you for your answer, but in fact it is certainly a forgetting intentionally or not on the part of Nord, and it is really lacking for the live game. I don't know how to get them back the information, because it is a feature that could be easily corrected and I must not be the only one to find it a shame especially since, moreover, the NW2 is a great machine.

No, I have to disagree here.. It is a design decision, in my opinion. It is a completely different instrument than the Piano or Stage series, and you can work around it with the hold function.

-dj

I had mine for 6 months and sold it. Just never connected with it and couldn't get it to do what my Stage 3 could already do for me. So my A1 returns as the compliment to my Stage 3.

I was able to get a Wave 2 brand new for $2100+tax w/free shipping. That's about the price they're going for used on Reverb (some poor soul is selling his for $2K with a lot of cosmetic damage.)

I had bought an Argon8X as my top board, and it's good, but as it's within the return window I decided to return it, and combined with some gift cards I had on hand just ordered a Wave 2.

So now I'll have a 3 Nord stack - Piano 4, Stage 3 Compact and Wave 2. I was also going to go with other rack modules but think I can do everything I possibly need with these 3, and maybe for a few uses just sample from the rack and then play back on one of these. For example, my ESQ-M - I think most of what I did with it can be replaced on the Wave in some form.

I listened to a lot of demos and read a lot of comments (including this whole thread) and I can see in some cases why people aren't thrilled by the W2, or that it does what the Stage 3 already does with the A1 engine. For my use case I'm looking at doing covers live as well as general pads which I think the W2 will work well for.

As to the form factor, as I already have a TP/8 keyboard I love on the S3C having the same in 61-key format on top makes sense. If I need to go to a 2 keyboard stack I can keep the Piano 4 at home.

tsss27 wrote:

andy_felon wrote:Why did you decide that cobalt has more options? Cobalt has 8 voice polyphony, weaker filter, two osc, no samples, no morphing, etc.

Cobalt has 3 envelopes, 3 LFO's, .

The Wave 2 also has 3 envelopes.
As for lfos, it only has one main lfo per layer but it has other "hidden" lfos.
For example the vibrato which has a dedicated lfo where you can set depth and speed. Or the lfo in the fx section (tremolo, pan, phaser, chorus etc).
Also, the gate sequencer, when controlled with its own envelope (a 4th envelope on the wave), in conjunction with the pattern editor - gives you a custom volume modulator that runs in cycles

First impressions after FedEx dropped off a new Wave 2 today.

#1 task…upgrade OS from 1.12. I wonder if it’s been sitting in a warehouse for a while.

As I get used to Nord keyboards I’m starting to get the hang of the panel and control scheme so over time it’ll even get easier. The layout is logical.

Love the keybed and the build quality.

Played through most of the presets as an initial step and it’s solid. A lot of goodness here and I think it will work well as a general purpose all-around synth and I will definitely de-rack my ESQ-M. I’m hearing a lot of similar sounds except on steroids and with effects.

But - my impression is that it’s a jack of all trades and master of none without a specific personality. But for what I want (a great performance board to do cover songs well) it seems perfect at first listen.

Restarting this thread - went to my local Guitar Center which had a used Prophet X on display. Was curious as it’s been compared to the NW2.

I prefer the NW2 keybed, and although the PX seemed solid and had some great sounds it wasn’t worth the extra price over the Nord in my opinion.

Anyone else test both out?

MarkJames wrote:Restarting this thread - went to my local Guitar Center which had a used Prophet X on display. Was curious as it’s been compared to the NW2.

I prefer the NW2 keybed, and although the PX seemed solid and had some great sounds it wasn’t worth the extra price over the Nord in my opinion.

Anyone else test both out?

I have both. PX just arrived for an acceptable price. I really like the NW2 (was a NW owner years ago) despite some strange decision about midi (multitimbrality), and Program change being too slow (like NL4, really a Nord thing) and a bad silkscreen (should receive stickers soon), keyboard touch is great to my taste, and the synth is so easy to use, already programmed a lot of patches. PX has quirks too (my unit came with a defective screen, a permanent white line on it but readable, but support is excellent for this kind of hardware failure, and i should receive a new screen soon, and i may already have to change the CR2032). Programming on the PX as i'm writing and getting very good results, but concerning VA osc, for now, i prefer NW2 sound over PX. PX kb is nice too, almost exactly the same as my old NI S49 mk1, just a little more heavy (very subtle).

Rcmusic wrote:

MarkJames wrote:Restarting this thread - went to my local Guitar Center which had a used Prophet X on display. Was curious as it’s been compared to the NW2.

I prefer the NW2 keybed, and although the PX seemed solid and had some great sounds it wasn’t worth the extra price over the Nord in my opinion.

Anyone else test both out?

I have both. PX just arrived for an acceptable price. I really like the NW2 (was a NW owner years ago) despite some strange decision about midi (multitimbrality), and Program change being too slow (like NL4, really a Nord thing) and a bad silkscreen (should receive stickers soon), keyboard touch is great to my taste, and the synth is so easy to use, already programmed a lot of patches. PX has quirks too (my unit came with a defective screen, a permanent white line on it but readable, but support is excellent for this kind of hardware failure, and i should receive a new screen soon, and i may already have to change the CR2032). Programming on the PX as i'm writing and getting very good results, but concerning VA osc, for now, i prefer NW2 sound over PX. PX kb is nice too, almost exactly the same as my old NI S49 mk1, just a little more heavy (very subtle).

I’ve heard mixed results about the 8Dio sample library. Any thoughts there? If I could get the PX for $2K I’d consider it as an addition to my gear, but I’m probably just feeding my GAS over a real need.

MarkJames wrote:I’ve heard mixed results about the 8Dio sample library. Any thoughts there? If I could get the PX for $2K I’d consider it as an addition to my gear, but I’m probably just feeding my GAS over a real need.

There is a video where some guy goes through every single sample on the PX. It is at least an hour long I believe...maybe 1.5 hours... In any case, the 8Dio library is, in my opinion, not very good despite it taking 150gb of space. Nord has some great single velocity samples and many of them sound more realistic than the 8Dio ones.
One reason for this is that while many of the 8Dio samples have multiple velocity layers or alternate samples, they are not consistent from note to note and do not give a smooth velocity transition.
Here's an example (albeit maybe a subtle one.) Listen to the guitar here, and notice that low F sample has a buzz in it. Almost every single time that key is hit, you can hear that buzz, it's the exact same sample over and over.
If I load a similar-sounding Nord guitar, the samples are all clean and consistent across the keyboard.
Now, if the 8Dio sample had more layers and RR's that buzz would actually be very realistic as it would only happen occasionally...but there is not enough variation. This carries throughout the PX soundset...the underlying samples in their bare bones form are fine in terms of audio quality...but there aren't enough of them per instrument to sound like anything other than, well, playing samples...if that makes sense.
While I've not encountered this personally I've also read reports of loop points in some samples not being smooth (some strings, choirs...) This can be tweaked but one would think that from the factory this should be dialed in.

In my opinion, the PX would be better off had the entire 200GB drive been open to customization, rather than just the (still admittedly large) 50GB provided for user data. However the overall workflow is much more like a conventional synth, things are essentially where you expect them to be whereas the Nord required a learning adjustment for me. I'd still take a standard synth layout over the Nord's streamlined one any day of the week as I can dial up the sounds I want much faster. You also have a lot more control over the samples on the PX, so if the goal is experimentation then that machine even with its factory library would give you more sonic opportunities. I also prefer the analog filter on the PX, and the mod matrix is more adjustable than Nord's morphing system (and is still quite easy to use; you really don't need to go deep into menus to set things up at all...just press some buttons and move the knobs/controls you want to assign.) You get extra performance controls (ribbons and a second expression pedal input,) and more options for how the synth responds to your playing (poly glide, glide types, key priority, single/multi triggering options, adjustable unison etc.) Now many of these options are available on the Nord in some way but they are linked to each other.

I would say to sum up the Nord would probably cover more ground; the PX would allow you to dial in things more specifically within the areas that it does cover. Whether you would have a use for both depends on what your plans are for each unit. But I would absolutely not buy the PX for the 8Dio samples.