Logo for Nord should be a snoring human

[analogika]

> which is what our dear OP Gambold is instead complaining about with Nord.<

Yes, because Nord is supposed to be THE LEADER. If for nothing else, to justify their eye-watering prices. But I'll toss in history, legacy, past product lines, and market adulation as other factors that imply, hell, insist that Nord stay in front of the boat, not just snooze in the cargo hold.

Who cares about the other keyboard makers. Comparing Nords to them as a way to justify the ennui in Stockholm is too easy, my friends. We don't look to Yamaha or god, Korg to show us the way. And we don't pat ourselves on the back just because the worst Nord blows away the best Roland any day of the week.

Raise the bar, people. Demand better from the once and hopefully future industry leader. Because better is sure NOT what you've been getting lately.

Who says that Nord is supposed to be the leader? If we talk about sales/popularity it is the market that defines who is leader and who is not (and leaderships have changed in time in the past and will change again in the future, think about what happened to analog synth leading brands when digital synths stepped in, for example), technical leadership does not automatically imply being the winner on the market.

[cphollis]

I'm not sure I buy into the premise that "newer technology" always means "better instrument". Plenty of keyboards out there with gobs of tech that aren't necessarily better instruments.

Sitting next to me is a wonderful 7' acoustic piano. It's an amazing instrument whose basic design hasn't changed much over the years. A newer one isn't necessarily better than an older one, either.

From a market share perspective, it's Yamaha #1. Nord doesn't even make the top 5 in terms of volume.

[cgrafx]

From my perspective the place where Nord has really failed is in not fully developing the flagship products they already make.

There is clearly either a lack of ambition or programming capability. The Stage 4 is a perfect example of a partially executed vision, particularly in the MIDI department.

The MIDI implementation from the NS2 -> NS3 -> NS4 has been a constant reduction in capabilities.

Why for example on the NS4 do I have to give up an entire synth engine to do external MIDI?

Why are things like B3 settings in the Stage 3 or 4, more limited than in the lesser Electro series?

How out of touch do you have to be to not implement 9th drawbar cancel?

Small things like having a consistent MIDI implementation between all of their keyboards. For example, I had a Nord Eletro 3 and a Nord Electro 2 Rack - but when you MIDI them together and hit the Piano/Organ button they would change to the opposite mode instead of track together. Nord response, when I brought that to their attention was actually hostile instead of saying that's interesting let's see if we can fix it.

The pace of bug fixes and feature development is glacial.

I'm not comparing Nord to any other company, I will call anyone out when I see things poorly executed or badly supported.

Actually one more area that is a pretty big mess up, the Nord Website - yes it's pretty but functionally way less useful, particularly in regards to the sample/sound section.

Consolidating the sound/sample libarary access into the sound manager was a nice touch, but it doesn't actually properly display all of the sounds/samples that are available for each instrument. So, now you need to muck around with changing what variation of an instrument is connected to the sound manager to find older generation sounds/samples that you might be interested in. For many users this means a huge loss of access to previous samples, because they don't know how to access the older stuff that doesn't show up.

[Gambold]

I have a curiosity and a speculation about Nord's development shop. I heard many years ago that whichever software engineer was responsible for the Nord Lead 3 had passed away and that left a big gap in evolving synths in the vein of the NL3 with all the endless rotary encoders and such.

I wonder if similar things are happening with attrition of their engineers and the knowledge of each product is so niche that if someone leaves then evolving upon that design becomes difficult or impossible. This could be an explanation for how the NS2 had such a rock solid MIDI implementation that didn't fully trickle down to the NS3 and definitely not to the NS4. It may also explain how things like the LED encoder knobs switched to the faders on products like the NS4 and NW2. Who knows, I may be speculating incorrectly.

[analogika]

Why for example on the NS4 do I have to give up an entire synth engine to do external MIDI?

I'm not privy to the programming constrictions of their machine design, but it seems to me that the machine ought to be judged against its predecessors, not by an arbitrary ideal (your personal wishlist notwithstanding, of course).

Which means that I'm fully with you on criticism of the MIDI capabilities of the S3 and S4 vs. the S2.

Why are things like B3 settings in the Stage 3 or 4, more limited than in the lesser Electro series?

I believe there's an architectural limit on options. So the greatly enhanced functionality of the Stage comes at the price of a handful fewer options for the individual engines vs. the Electro and the dedicated flagships.

How out of touch do you have to be to not implement 9th drawbar cancel?

Maybe this option will become less relevant in an future age where our machines can finally store presets.

In earnest: I lobbied for 9th drawbar cancel in 2005, when I bought my Electro 2. They've implemented it in a few models since then, but the actually relevant (to me) behaviour, the retriggering of percussion when switched on while holding notes as the 9th drawbar is cancelled, was never introduced AFAIK.

Without that, it's pretty much irrelevant to my usage.

Also, I would be hard pressed to choose which other option I'd have removed to make way for this setting… (assuming the hard limit I referred to above is a thing)

YMMV, obviously.

[cphollis]

"I believe there's an architectural limit on options. So the greatly enhanced functionality of the Stage comes at the price of a handful fewer options for the individual engines vs. the Electro and the dedicated flagships."

I came to the same conclusion a while back. On products like the Stage 4, there's a ton of "unexposed functionality" -- things you KNOW the keyboard could do, but the function isn't exposed.

Well, there's only so much you can expose directly before you start getting into menu systems and the deep dives they bring. As it stands now on the NS4, most of the functionality is "one deep" in that you can get to what you want by pressing a button that changes state (e.g. shift, solo, waveform, etc.).

To expose more functionality, you'd have to go two or three deep -- or add a bunch more controls -- and then it wouldn't be a Nord, would it? I see the designers making hard choices about how best to expose the most useful functionality in a way that keeps things flowing along.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Hi,

Usually, if there is a long time of silence, they‘re doing something really huge. Let’s hope.

Cheers

Eumel

[Gambold]

Never forget the size of Nord company, compared to the big ones.
Some would say they would be more agile, some say they need to be cautious as they cannot afford going in every direction.
Like many here, I don't really understand some of the decisions made on new models. But I must admit they locked me in their philosophy !

Fred

[kotatsu]

All those keyboards are good products, but they are 2 or more years old (YC was issued in 2021) and apart from the packaging they don't offer anything really innovative, imo, which is what our dear OP Gambold is instead complaining about with Nord.

I see your point. Yes, they are definitely trying to fit Nord's shoes leveraging the high price point of the new Nord Stage.

If I had to imagine a truly innovative product from Nord it would probably be (wet dream incoming) something akin to a fusion between Nord Leads and Nord Modular, with both the option of using hard-coded DSP routes and designing custom patches (maybe with wireless uploading) but with improved physical modelling, sampling capability, complex line in/line out routing and modern QOL features like audio over usb or OSC support (a man can dream). All built over their lovely patching methods. Throw in the ability of compiling external objects written in C++ like in Max/MSP (MUCH easier said than done) and I would gladly spend some grands on it. I'd love a box that I can program at home and then bring on stage without anything else.

Only two problems:
1. it would be an EXTREME pain in the ass to produce such instrument (no wonder no one thought about it). It would cater to an extremely narrow audience, even without all these wild customization options. Even a simple Nord Lead 5 with maybe sampling, modern digital fxs and physmod would be relatively expensive to project and would have limited audience (who even wants a Nord Modular 2 today beside us nerds?). And this brings us to the following problem:
2. why doing all this when you can simply get 5k on any new nord stage x? They got the status of industry standard so everyone and their dog (and especially churches in the USA) buy them like crazy. No need to squander resources on a new product line when you can milk what you already have.

In conclusion: they should make the Nord Guitar 1.

[Gambold]

The Electro 7 is now SEVEN years old. And I know we've all been clutching ourselves in anticipation of a fall roll-out for the E7...and it still could happen...but if it doesn't? We going to march into Year 8 of what is probably Nord's best all-around product?

I say best in that while the Stage is the flagship (don't get me started on what's happening there), but the Electro is more affordable and flexible in its configurations (you can get a 61-key model, so it is viable as a "second" keyboard sitting on top of the rack).

Someone asked why should Nord be the leader? Because philosophically and aesthetically and functionally they always have been. Sure, Yamaha is the King of the Market and they have scads of boards, but no-one is going to make a serious argument that any one of them is as cool as a Nord. Maybe as functional, or more modern, but...not as awesome. You're on a desert island with a power source for one keyboard and you're going to drag a YC88 with you? As for that Korg, well you can flip it over and de-bone your fish on it.

A Nord is always special. We know this. And it's because yeah, they ARE the leaders, in an almost ineffable way. And that seems to be slipping. Which makes me sad. So here I am, kvetching about it.