Nord User Forum

jazzystu wrote: Instead of changing the Stage 2 right now to the latest organ and having the rhodes trem from the electro and the latest leslie from the C2D, they will gradually introduce them years later.

I wonder why I can't get 30mb download speed on my dialup connection out here in the countryside. I'm willing to pay for it.

There are a lot of factors that determine why a company does the things it does and things are not always as easy to do as it may seem.

No. They are quite capable of adding all the best features from all of the boards to their "flagship".

However, they deliberately don't in order to keep people hooked.

It is good business, rather than cynical manipulation. They second reason they are in business is to make great red keyboards for people.

jazzystu wrote:No. They are quite capable of adding all the best features from all of the boards to their "flagship".

However, they deliberately don't in order to keep people hooked.

This sounds like absurd conspiracy theorizing to me.

Tell me how keeping the newest organ modeling OUT of the Stage series (for now) is keeping people "hooked," or generating extra sales.

Of course they can add the best new features to their flagship. And they almost certainly will, eventually. But they can't just snap their fingers and make it happen. Especially with a small company, some things are going to be completed before others. So should they have simply "sat on" the C2D for x months until they could also include that engine in the Stage series? Who does that serve?

And, as I said, there are other issues to deal with, like existing inventory. A strategy that puts them out of business serves no one. In the mean time, as I said, no one beats Nord for keeping older units updatable, for free.

jazzystu wrote:No. They are quite capable of adding all the best features from all of the boards to their "flagship".

If you're talking about the NS2, I don't believe everything is possible after the fact.

jazzystu wrote: However, they deliberately don't in order to keep people hooked.

And how is it that you know this?

anotherscott wrote: This sounds like absurd conspiracy theorizing to me.

Tell me how keeping the newest organ modeling OUT of the Stage series (for now) is keeping people "hooked," or generating extra sales.

Of course they can add the best new features to their flagship. And they almost certainly will, eventually. But they can't just snap their fingers and make it happen. Especially with a small company, some things are going to be completed before others. So should they have simply "sat on" the C2D for x months until they could also include that engine in the Stage series? Who does that serve?

And, as I said, there are other issues to deal with, like existing inventory. A strategy that puts them out of business serves no one. In the mean time, as I said, no one beats Nord for keeping older units updatable, for free.

Ditto. It's amazing that so many people supposedly know and understand Clavia's business model and the reasons for the decisions they make.

I really DON'T understand their "model" or whatever. IMO it has been lost few resent years. They have made a revolutionary concept for a live player and Stage was a flagship. All those models from C2, wave, electro and (first) NP had their place in this concept. Also, earlier there were more really interesting updates in sound library.

What is happening at the moment? Really not much. I don't want to go the details about all these issues with NP2 or new Electro (or this ridiculous ND). All I am saying here is that I've been waiting for a long time for something really interesting to happen from Clavia. There was a time when Nord made a revolutionary concept and gave us a amazing set of e-pianos but this moment is quite far behind. Those sounds are quite ok still today, but I wouldn't wait too much longer to competitors responses. With Clavia's knowhow and resent memory capacity, those EPs could be much better.

And please, do not make any more models like "Nord Electro 4D76ha_ex". Time to give us really something new.

JacksonP wrote:And please, do not make any more models like "Nord Electro 4D76ha_ex". Time to give us really something new.

Nord Drum?

JacksonP wrote:I really DON'T understand their "model" or whatever. IMO it has been lost few resent years. They have made a revolutionary concept for a live player and Stage was a flagship. All those models from C2, wave, electro and (first) NP had their place in this concept.

Not really. The Wave and Electro 3 had sample playback before the Stage did. The Electro 3 had an improved organ model before the Stage did. More often than not, the line has not been entirely coherent, as different models got different things in different orders. Compared to most recent years, the fact that the NS2 enjoyed a nice run as really having almost the best of everything was almost an aberration!

JacksonP wrote:Also, earlier there were more really interesting updates in sound library.

The sound library grew out of the Electro's initial design goal of replicating vintage boards. So they have now given us tons of Mellotron/Chamberlin/Orchestron; RMI electric piano; string machine style synths from ARP/Solina, Elka, Logan, Korg, Eminent, Roland, Crumar; a sampling of classic synth sounds from Moog, Oberheim, Roland, Sequential Circuits, Yamaha. The thing is, there is a diminishing pool of vintage keys after that. What are you missing? (Keep in mind that the single-velocity architecture of the sample library means it is inherently limited in its ability to do convincing acoustic instruments... what we have there is a bonus, not what it was designed to do.) That said,I'd like to see the ARP Pro Soloist.

JacksonP wrote:Time to give us really something new.

Just curious: what would you consider something new? A red competitor for the Korg Kronos and to a lesser degree, the Yamaha Motif XF and Roland Fantom G?

Time will tell, but I don't think Clavia is heading for full-fledged workstations with a bazillion features and a 2-3 minute boot time. That said, development at Clavia seems to be one of step-wise refinement, while competitors (mainly thinking of Korg here) seem to have thrown out their old architecture (M3).

I don't think that is true however: the Kronos is pretty much a cheaper version of the Oasys (with some new features), the Yamaha Motif XF a Motif XS with flash modules and the Roland Fantom G a Fantom X with more memory, a better/flashier user interface and most of the previous sounds are now built in. Seems like all of the major vendors are still trying to make optimal use of existing investments in technology, combined with fairly conservative new features.

I would really like Clavia to come out with a new Modular. Maybe with a 4 octave keyboard, a nice sprinkling of knobs and a nice touch screen for configuring the thing without having to resort to a computer-based editor. I can dream, can't I?

mjbrands wrote:competitors (mainly thinking of Korg here) seem to have thrown out their old architecture (M3).

I don't think that is true however: the Kronos is pretty much a cheaper version of the Oasys (with some new features), the Yamaha Motif XF a Motif XS with flash modules and the Roland Fantom G a Fantom X with more memory, a better/flashier user interface and most of the previous sounds are now built in. Seems like all of the major vendors are still trying to make optimal use of existing investments in technology, combined with fairly conservative new features.

I agree, most new models from everyone are evolutionary.

The M3 architecture really wasn't thrown out... I think it's basically a scaled down version of the OASYS HD-1 engine, which, along with the other OASYS engines (and then some), re-appeared in more cost effective form in the Kronos. The only "new" architecture lately, which cannot be traced directly to a specific predecessor, has probably been the Roland Jupiter 80.