Nord User Forum

>it is transformer hum coming from the power supply. No, there is no fix for it.<

Well that's not good. Not for what these things cost. If Nord can't manage a quiet power supply, my first Electro will be my last...and I'm sure I won't be alone.

I can't believe they let this kind of problem out of the shop. It's this kind of thing that can quickly shrink sales, and suddenly our beloved Nords are collector items. Then we slouch back to Roland or Yamaha, corporatized against all our wishes...

Someone with connections please slap someone in Sweden. This is double-plus uncool.

I'm not trying to start/continue any arguments here...just stating the facts of life...

Nord power supplies have been doing this for 20+ years. They use seriously beefy transformers for long-term reliability. It is in the nature of all iron-core transformers that they may hum to some degree. There are other more detailed posts here in the forum which offer more detailed explanations of the technical aspects of this.

It is what it is. I believe that I've heard someone once say something along the lines of: "if you're laying next to (insert name of favorite s*x goddess/god here), are you really going to throw that person out of bed for eating crackers and getting crumbs in the bed?

Low level ambient hum is trivia in the grand scheme of things.

I contacted Nord technical support about this today. I got the same answer. It's because it's an iron-core transformer, and those things hum. So I guess the best thing to to is to convince yourself that it's a part of the instruments' unique and charming personality - simply say to yourself that it wouldn't be a real Nord if it didn't hum

pablomastodon wrote:Nord power supplies have been doing this for 20+ years. They use seriously beefy transformers for long-term reliability. It is in the nature of all iron-core transformers that they may hum to some degree.

(emphasis added)

Power supply design has come a long way in the last 20 years:
There's no technical reason (including reliability) for not solving this and the other power supply shortcomings (lack of global input range, EM interference in audio band with guitar pickups).

I recommend against accepting mediocrity: If you find this dissatisfying, keep making noise . Maybe Nord will take notice, and bring their boards even closer to perfection.

You can always vote with you money. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you already bought it and it is under warranty, see if you can make arrangements with your distributor to return or exchange it with something more to your liking. I doubt if complaining about it on this forum will create the desired result. Sad, I know.

Well IMHO Nords are stage instruments. Any guitar player's amp is a white noise generator compared to that when idle, so no real issue here.

Studio equipment should not hum. Nords can be used in dead quiet studios also, that's where the confusion comes from.

For the sake of fair balance, Yamaha managed to assemble stage pianos with internal power supply without any audible hum. That's a fact.

Not sure if NP3 hums. If so, some folks will complain,too.

Whether the annoyance is acceptable or not for an iron core transformer, I don't think it should be occurring in a brand new relatively expensive instrument like the Nord. This is a QC issue for sure, and indeed one could question the necessity of such a transformer in the first place.

Yeah guys, you can love your Nords, we all do, but let's not excuse or apologize something like this away.

My Electro 4 is as quiet as a mouse. No hum or buzz. Nor should there be from a $2000+ instrument.

There is zero excuse for this, it's not "part of the charm" of anything - it's a design flaw. Yes we can vote with our pocketbooks but it's better to just lobby hard for the Clavia to do the right thing and fix this problem. This forum is a good place to start - Nord reads it and some of the posters here are in regular communication with Clavia.

Well, i have to say that after four months of owning my new Electro 5D 73, the power supply hum is really not an issue in any live situation into which i have taken it. It's just not an issue in the "real world." In my studio it's pretty obvious, but i'm not going to record it thru the air anyhow.

I'm more bothered by the fact that the keyboard is "E to E" as opposed to "F to F" as my Electro 3 was. F to F fits my musical environment more than E to E does, but i accept that i'm a dinosaur and i'm just glad still to be playing jazz in public (although having that upper F would sure be sweet, and more than once i"ve had to pantomime it!).

BTW Pablo is totally right - the set lists are a usable solution to Nord's omission of bank select functionality re: patch memory. Thanks Pablo!

motwell wrote:Well, i have to say that after four months of owning my new Electro 5D 73, the power supply hum is really not an issue in any live situation into which i have taken it.

The same happend to me. I actually planned to return it for repair, but it never happened because I didn't want to be without my Nord for six weeks or something. Now I hardly ever think of the hum any more.