Cornopean wrote:I may be wrong, but I believe that the Wave samples do not allow multiple velocities to switch the sample set, whereas the Nord Piano samples do? This is of course a vital part of a sampled piano.
You're absolutely right. You can have a maximum of one sample per key, not four like on the Yamaha Motif or Roland Fantom. On the other hand, the piano sounds on the Nord products with a piano section (Stage, Electro and Piano) are more sophisticated than simply using (up to) four samples per key. From what I understood, they're using up to seven samples per key and do some clever mixing between those, so you can't hear the transition from one sample to another (based on velocity).
On pianoworld.com they did in in-depth analysis of the piano sounds on different products (including the Nord Piano, or maybe it was a Stage 2) and I'm in the paragraph above pretty much just coughing some things I read in their DPBSD project pages.
With a few small exceptions, the Wave is like the synth section of the Stage 2, but on steroids (the synth section of the Stage 2 seems to be a slimmed-down version of the Wave). If you get a Wave, don't do it for sounds that are traditionally sampled. Instead, get it for awesome lead sounds, the virtual-analog functionality and strange combinations (i.e. a sampled instrument like the awesome Mellotron sounds in combination with the use of filters and envelopes).
