Nord User Forum

Am I the only one very frustrated with painfully slow progress of NS4 which released half-finished?

I got my unit on May 2023 and since then I’ve been waiting for have at least an instrument which you can control with external MIDI (ext KB mode). Well actually you can but just notes, no pedal, no wheel, no aftertouch. There are many other setbacks which some are not malfunctioning but more like (badly thought) features. To be fair in this first year Clavia has fixed some of crucial malfuntioning (like Midi sync) but in general to me it’s amazing how unfinished it still is. Just read Bug Sheet moderated by @WannitBBBad:


Only reason I can think why users aren’t more like me is that they mostly use their NS4 ”standalone” in other words without other gear. In my Midi setup NS4 remains quite unusable at the moment. It cannot properly control other gear and orther gear cannot properly control it. There are midi tasks which are easy with NS3 but impossible with NS4 which is IMO a big shame. Who would have thougt that NS4 which increased multitimbral power compared to NS3 made it impossible to use that power?

If I used MIDI in my setup, I really would be frustrated as well. It's really disappointing that Nord still hasn't fixed the capability for NSM to convert NSMP files to NSMP4 format for the Stage 4. The last two versions state it works when in fact they broke the capability for the Piano 5 as well. The only other reason I can think of for why more folks aren't complaining is that they've never owned a Nord or they've upgraded from a Nord Piano or Electro and they haven't really gotten into the synth capabilities (and problems) yet.

Regarding midi:
1) Nord should first of all enhance/correct the appendix called Midi Controller List to define absolute all midi controllers with extra values per controllers(on/off, drawbar position etc) sent and eventually received from the whole NS4 panel. The list currently miss a lot of information, midi monitoring to find these info should not be neccessary.
2) The appendix also should define which of these controllers are sent/received per the three modes Global, Aux kbd and Layer.
3) Last but not least, they must fix the implementation to ensure that they really works also for receive.

If memory serves, the NS3 had a similar timeframe of significant OS updates and lots of bug fixes for at least a year or more. I intentionally waited to get a NS3 and continued using my NS2 until it was clear that the biggest issues were flushed out on the NS3. Not that it's a great feeling to have such major issues this long after a product's release, though there is a precedent.

Looking at the update history, there have been new OS releases almost on a monthly basis, with the last one this February. Some were major updates while some were very small, but it looks like the activity on the NS4 has definitely not stopped. As Eric mentioned, the NS3 went through a similar process, with OS 2.0 arriving one and a half years after initial release (and then there were several additional minor and not-so-minor improvements).

I agree it's infuriating to buy an expensive product only to act as an unpaid beta-tester, but unfortunately that's how most companies work, not only in the music business. Software is now such a complex and essential part of consumer products that it's standard practice to release a product with an early OS release, and then wait for customer feedback for bugfixes and improvements.

I have history of NS2 to NS3 and now NS4. And I remember well that last time with NS3 it took some time to get it right. There were issues and series of updates.

But in my opinion things have now been little different and unfortunately worse. On the other hand NS4 came with more substantial hardware architecture updates and yet same time with many strange problems. After quite long consideration I’ve came to a conclusion that there were serious problems in their development, they did not paid enough attention to different usages of their quite complex new board. Someone might say they took too big piece of cake that they could swallow. There were not enough expertise in MIDI stuff in their development team for example. This has been my impression when I have talked straight to their support.

I don't have any direct knowledge of Nord's staff, so this is simply my impression from working in the hardware/software industry for the last 40+ years. It seems to me that Nord only has a single software engineer working on all of their products. There is no way it should take this long to fix the current issues If there was a dedicated engineer working on just the Nord Stage 4. An experienced coder could easily be cranking out updates every couple of weeks.

It’s normal that when releasing a new product with this complexity there are some (mostly) hidden bugs. But if we take for example these external midi issues (NS4 don’t handle wheel, exp or AT) it’s amazing that they released their product with such a substantially crucial problem. Did they even test it properly with some midi controller connected to it? I begin to doubt that. But as we know this isn’t even the whole story. Now it has been A YEAR and still we cannot fully use midi controller with our NS4. IMO something strange is happening here with this company. Are there hardware level problems or are they lacking qualified engineer to do the job or don’t they just care? I don’t know. Remember that we are talking about their flagship product for which loyal customers (like me) were willing to put 4K euros.

Year ago I bought NS4 with an idea to replace my NS3 with it and of course benefit from new features like 3-part synth engine. Now I am stuck with both, doing all my gigs with old NS3 and waiting for at least some most crucial problems to be fixed. I believe this sums quite clearly my frustration.

In my midi setup, I rely entirely on SiparioX.
With the SiparioX I control NS4 (all 7 layers) with 2 other synths and 4 effect pedals without any problems.

https://www.lab4music.it/siparioX.php?lang=EN

Tonda wrote:In my midi setup, I rely entirely on SiparioX.
With the SiparioX I control NS4 (all 7 layers) with 2 other synths and 4 effect pedals without any problems.

https://www.lab4music.it/siparioX.php?lang=EN

IMO it’s very sad if you need to use Midi Router like Sipario to do things you could do with NS4 itself. We really should not accept that.