Nord Stage 3 Sampling

[Jimmy Lange]

Hi Friends...please forgive my ignorance, as I am new to NORD products and just now considering the purchase of a STAGE 3 COMPACT to become my easy, single-keyboard gig rig. I wanted to know if I can SAMPLE my favorite YAMAHA MOTIF ( rack ) and ROLAND RD700 ( keyboard ) sounds into the NS3 COMPACT ? Sure would lighten the load, yunno ? Many thanks ! Jimmy

[Ivan Jochner]

Hi,yes you will be able to sample but u have to consider 2 things:
1) 480 Mb memory of samples for NS3
2) There is no such thing like different voice (sample) layers trigerred with different velocities ( like in motif there are 8 elements per voice).

The good things about sampling that Nord Sample editor uses lossless wav compression.



Best regards
Ivan

[baekgaard]

You can make your own samples, but they are single layer only (one velocity setting). You can use a filter in the synth when you play them back, so it's possible to not only scale their amplitude but also make high velocity sounds brighter, although it takes a little bit of programming.

Some of your Motif sounds are probably quite complex, and for those, it may be better to try to recreate them in the synth "from scratch" in some cases. You can of course sample the basic tone, but if the tone is set up to respond to modulations, it may not really be possible to get a faithful recreation by simply sampling.

For the piano... I'd say forget it. You can only sample your own synth samples; you cannot sample and create new (multi-layer) piano samples. Besides, IMHO, the Nord is light-years ahead of the RD-700 in tonality, so once you get used to the Nord sounds, I doubt you would ever want to go back to the Roland ones... at least that was the case for me, having played a RD-700NX.

[harmonizer]

If acoustic piano sounds are important to you, consider getting stereo amplification (i.e. two powered speakers). Most of the acoustic piano sounds which are available for the Nord keyboards are optimized for stereo. In my opinion, the Nord "Royal Grand" acoustic piano sound is the one that does best with a single speaker.

I second the statement from baekgaard that you are not going to get good acoustic piano sounds by sampling sounds from some other keyboard, and that you will do much better by using the acoustic piano sounds which Nord itself provides for its boards.

[Klangwerk]

Hi Jimmy Lang,

I agree with baekgaard about the roland, but even the roland has some natural sounds I need. So, why don´t you play the motif rack via the extern section? Ok, you need a little rack for your mixer and the motif-rack (not heavy), but you have a single-keyboard-rig and keep you favourite motif-sounds.

Cheers Helmuth

[mistral_73]

Hi,

I second Klangwerk:
If you control your Motif (and Roland) via the extern section, you'll be able to keep the best of your gear without sound compromises and with the legendary ease of use of the nord stage.

Cheers

[someclevername]

I've thought about this myself, to overcome the limitations of the sample section of the Stage I'm thinking about getting some velcro and sticking an iPad mini to the top of my Nord Stage. On the iPad you can run a sample player like bismark bs-16i controlled via the extern section.

After that it's just a case of sampling your favourite sounds and creating some nice soundfonts.