Nord User Forum

Why is the EP7 Tines Amped size Med and the EP8 Nefertiti MKI size Lrg?
Since the electric pianos do not have samples of strings of resonance.
What is the difference between the Med size and the Lrg size in the electric pianos?

Who said that Rhodes pianos don't show pedal down resonance? Effect may be less evident than an acoustic piano, but they do; read for example this similar discussion on Pianoteq forum (see the reply from Philippe Guillaume) http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic.php?id=546

the sound is different in the Rhodes when the sustain pedal is down because of the resonances of all the tuning forks which can vibrate freely as the dampers are not in contact anymore with the tines.

In general, both medium and large samples contain string resonance. Medium only has it enabled for the middle range of the keyboard whereas large has it for the entire range. The XL samples in addition comes with each key individually sampled (it's "fully mapped"), whereas the others share single samples across multiple keys (they are "stretched").

It doesn't say on the mothership website whether there is difference in how many keys share a single sample, but my guess is that it's not unlikely that there could also be a difference between the amount of keys that share a single sample between small, medium and large (as there is to the XL version).

I haven't tested the EP7 vs EP8, but usually it's not to difficult to find a set of keys that have some "odd" buzzing noise that distinguishes them from their neighbours. This way, it's relatively easy to see how many keys share a sample. Maybe the EP8 has more samples than the EP7 (i.e. like one sample could be used by 3 keys in EP8 and 4-5 keys for the EP7 in the middle range, or something).

I might try to test at some point, so for now, this is pure speculation!

Also, when I got my Stage 2 EX it came loaded with a sample that's not on the website: the Wurlitzer 2 Amped in L size (16 MB). Online you can only find the XL which is 24 MB.
Anybody noticed this?

I compared them thoroughly and honestly couldn't hear any meaningful difference. Maybe some overtone here and there on some velocity layer, but surely nothing that would be perceivable onstage.
It's not a big difference in file size, but it's always nice to save a few MB for some custom samples!

baekgaard wrote:It doesn't say on the mothership website whether there is difference in how many keys share a single sample, but my guess is that it's not unlikely that there could also be a difference between the amount of keys that share a single sample between small, medium and large (as there is to the XL version).

Since they make a point of that difference in XL and don't mention anything similar among S/M/L I would expect the S/M/L to all have the same amount of stretching. My bet would be that all three of those are the exact same sample set, just with the resonance differences, which is really how they describe it.

I've never tested this, but I wonder if the three different resonance key spans align with the actions. That is, the S has the resonance for 61 keys, the M has resonances for something in the 73-76 range, and the L of course has 88. (Which still wouldn't mean there's no advantage at all to, for example, putting a bigger-than-S sample into a 61, since the 61 still allows you to shift octaves, as well as play from an attached controller with more keys.) That would be a pretty logical way to split them. Though it's also possible they left the resonance off some of the extremes even of the 61 and 7x to keep the file sizes smaller.

I just played around with the EP7 and EP8. The EP8 has many samples; possibly it is NOT stretched at all.

At least in some areas I tested carefully, there is no stretching: If you try the E and F just around the "list" knob on the NS3 (below middle C), you can hear they are very different (the F is quite funky (as in out of tune with itself) if you hit it hard, the E is just different from both the F and the Eb, and F# is also different from the others). So there I think it is clear to see that there is no stretching (there at least) -- so maybe it is similar to the XL samples, just without string resonance/pedal samples.

I'm not sure about the EP7; I am not totally convinced that it is unstretched, but it might be also. I'd need to record some keys to see if the samples are identical or not.

It's weird that the Med sample of the EP7 is 30 MB or so, and the Lrg EP8 is 20 MB. I guess this might be longer loops needed by the amplification -- or maybe related to the next point:

In the process, I discovered that the EP7 has nice key-off samples -- but you can only hear that if the "Soft Release" is disabled. The other EPs don't have the same (level of) key off samples. Maybe that takes up some additional space.

As for the the sympathetic resonance: I don't think there is any in the EPs. You cannot enable the "String Resonance" button -- which I think is possible when a sound holds the pedal down samples, Eh?

Good sleuthing! I wonder if the designations mean something different on EPs. Unlike any of grands, every EP is apparently available in only one size (at least apart from Spider's observation that one as-shipped version differs from what's available on the web site)... but that size may be any of the four! If they're not doing resonances (and I agree, if you can't enable/disable it with the buttons, they're probably not), then it would seem that the sizes would have to indicate something else... and something with 4-levels of implementation. Hmm!

Considering that I have very constrained piano bank memory in my Electro 3, have the Wurlitzer 2 Amped in L size (16 MB) would be very useful for me.

harmonizer wrote:Considering that I have very constrained piano bank memory in my Electro 3, have the Wurlitzer 2 Amped in L size (16 MB) would be very useful for me.

Will try to upload it as soon as possible!

Really the String Resonance led does not light up in the EPs, only the Pedal Noise led lights up. That is, the EPs have Pedal Noise and have no String Resonance.