Nord User Forum

I love the sounds of the Nord Drum but I’m seriously considering getting rid of it and getting a better modelling synth. Currently I’m sending it midi sequences via Cirklon and the latency is getting up to seconds. I’ve got all the pads set to the same sound, with each pad responding to a different midi channel and the Cirklon is sending notes to three different midi channels in order to get polyphony. Currently the only issue is the latency. When I press play, the first two or three notes are on time and then it begins drifting massively, by the second scene of the song everything is totally out of rhythm. Every time I use this machine it drives me crazy.

When I press a note on my midi keyboard there is very noticeable latency and the more notes I play the larger the latency gets. I can’t seem to find anyone online having the same issue but it’s one of many that have come up in the past. Will I have these issues if I switch to a different Nord synth? Is there any way to fix this?

Hi Christ2000, welcome to the forum!

Strange and frustrating indeed! This is not normal for the 3p or Nord synths in general, I can't remember anyone else mentioning noticeable latency like that.

Apart from a bad MIDI cable, or a broken 3p, issues can occur if for some reason multiple MIDI notes trigger a single drum channel at the same time. This is because each drum channel is monophonic. Notes may cut each other off, the 3p will sound erratic.

This may occur if, for example, the general MIDI channel is the same as one or more of the individual MIDI channels.

Hope you get it sorted!
Albert

Could it be some sort of command overload? Did you check the MIDI command stream of your Cirkon? You might send it to a computer with a MIDI monitor software running.

Well, a sequencer can output a lot of MIDI data of course, but the OP also encountered this problem when playing a single note on a keyboard. It nevertheless is a good idea to monitor whatever MIDI is sent, it will probably also show if something's wrong with the cable.

I think these are the most common MIDI related problems with the Nord drum 2 and 3p I've read here on the forum:

-triggering a drum channel with more than one MIDI note at once, (usually due to Individual & Global MIDI channel setup)
-bad MIDI cables, bad MIDI interfaces,
-MIDI thru not working as expected when daisy chaining multiple devices,
-MIDI loops
-hardware itself malfunctioning (can't fully exclude it)
-I don't think there is (or ever was) a MIDI related problem with the 3p firmware

Sounds like a midi loop somewhere for sure. I've had this sometimes, and making a linear midi setup to debug makes a lot of things easier