New EP, "Stockholm"

[afroskully]

Warning…extremely sarcastic and tongue in cheek post below:

From wiki:
Stockholm syndrome. This term was first used by the media in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.

Nord our beloved captors have released a sample which makes us irrationally love them and forget all of the hardships we have suffered by voluntarily become their hostages. And they named that sample, Stockholm.

[Quai34]

> might regret stirring up the hornet’s nest but I’ll ask anyway: what’s wrong with the White Grand? At least in my opinion, it’s an amazing piano.<

I totally agree! I'm still debating if it's better than the Royal, but it's a pleasant issue to have. My point is that Clavia cannot be done with releasing new samples. If so, they'll have to change their marketing, because continuing new samples are part of their sales pitch (and pricing). Plus I think we are all assuming a technology leap is coming, and that will call for newer samples to work with it.

The current EP Stockholm XL is 3.5 times larger than the Nefertiti XL. Why? Clavia will never tell us, but we can assume through better sampling technology. The samples just keep growing, so we should expect even more detailed (and huger) Grand Piano samples in the future.

And hopefully more memory on the boards to contain them. The Stage 4 had no memory bump - THAT was not a good idea.

I totally agree with you on the somewhat-imminent technology leap. Especially since it's not just about Clavia: case in point, the Korg Nautilus, which is basically a cheaper Kronos with a slightly better sound library. The Stage 4 is an amazing board but it's just a further refinement of what Nord have been doing for the last decade: a great purchase if you own a Stage 1, 2 or 2 EX, a not-so-wise buy if you already own a 3 (unless you have some very specific needs or just like to upgrade whenever a new iteration of your favourite product(s) comes out).

I, for one, expect the next models to follow the same pattern (we'll surely see an Electro 7 sooner than later, and a Lead 5 likewise, which merely improve on the current boards, with no real updates to the sound engines) but something much bigger for the Stage 5 and every subsequent keyboard, clearly not just memory/drive space-wise. Small, incremental upgrades are a fine business model if you bet everything on quality and long-term support, that's what Apple do: but you still need, from time to time, to shake things up!

[Spider]

The Stage 4 is an amazing board but it's just a further refinement of what Nord have been doing for the last decade

That has always been Clavia's strategy, small incremental upgrades and no big revolutions.
Actually, the Stage 4 is by far the most radical departure from the original Stage concept: next to it the Classic, EX, 2, 2EX and 3 all seem like the same machine!

[Spider]

Warning…extremely sarcastic and tongue in cheek post below:

From wiki:
Stockholm syndrome. This term was first used by the media in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.

Nord our beloved captors have released a sample which makes us irrationally love them and forget all of the hardships we have suffered by voluntarily become their hostages. And they named that sample, Stockholm.

We have a strong candidate for the "Best post of the year" 2023 award.

[be lee vit]

so funny! It’s so apropos that I have to wonder if it was so named on purpose as a sly poke to all the Nord nerds

[DJKeys]

The Stage 4 is an amazing board but it's just a further refinement of what Nord have been doing for the last decade

That has always been Clavia's strategy, small incremental upgrades and no big revolutions.
Actually, the Stage 4 is by far the most radical departure from the original Stage concept: next to it the Classic, EX, 2, 2EX and 3 all seem like the same machine!

The architecture was released in the Nord Wave 2 in 2020-

-dj

[maxpiano]

The Stage 4 is an amazing board but it's just a further refinement of what Nord have been doing for the last decade

That has always been Clavia's strategy, small incremental upgrades and no big revolutions.
Actually, the Stage 4 is by far the most radical departure from the original Stage concept: next to it the Classic, EX, 2, 2EX and 3 all seem like the same machine!

The architecture was released in the Nord Wave 2 in 2020-

-dj

I think Spider refers to the fact that NS4 broke the traditional "(3 Sections + shared FXs) x 2 Slots/Panels with Extern" schema, which was the same on all previous Nord Stage versions and the main changes across them were at single section level; with NS4 it is no longer like that.

[kirsty]

If you haven't already tried it .. play the lowest bass notes really gently; you can hear the chink from the hammer on the tine - before the tone bar gets enough energy to really resonate. Lovely detail samples.

[afroskully]

oh man, the low end on this sample is brilliant. there's gotta be a hell of a lot of velocity layers on it, which I imagine is why it's so much bigger in file size, right?

i love it... can't stop playing it. a little bit of the twin drive really rounds out the low end nicely, but i still have to take about 5db of the low eq out for my taste.

[TomGisler]

I found I had to massively boost the high end to get enough power in the upper registers.