Pairings With Nords?

[Tasten-Bert]

Hello IHaveQuestions, I try to imagine what kind of musician you are and what would help you best. To me you seem to be still young, is that true? It would at least be of good help if we knew the style of your music. Is it rock or jazz or cover of all or influenced by classical? Do you need certain sounds for soloing such as brass and woods, or is it just accompaning? I mean, I play in a rock cover band 70s through 90s incl. Purple, Uriah Heep, Foreigner, Journey, Bon Jovi etc. plus a German Schlager-Band 70s where I need lots of brass and strings as the orchestral background. My favourite pairing of keys would be a korg kronos 88 as the bottom and a nord electro 5D 73 as the upper board, both MIDI-linked in both directions which would enable me to play the best nord piano sound on the korg keys or the best organ with the nord itself or good sax solo sounds of the korg with the nord keys. Plus having the large split and layer opportunities of the korg. Today I already love my little korg X50 for these good facts. Sunny regards from Germany.

[IHaveQuestions]

Hello IHaveQuestions, I try to imagine what kind of musician you are and what would help you best. To me you seem to be still young, is that true? It would at least be of good help if we knew the style of your music. Is it rock or jazz or cover of all or influenced by classical? Do you need certain sounds for soloing such as brass and woods, or is it just accompaning? I mean, I play in a rock cover band 70s through 90s incl. Purple, Uriah Heep, Foreigner, Journey, Bon Jovi etc. plus a German Schlager-Band 70s where I need lots of brass and strings as the orchestral background. My favourite pairing of keys would be a korg kronos 88 as the bottom and a nord electro 5D 73 as the upper board, both MIDI-linked in both directions which would enable me to play the best nord piano sound on the korg keys or the best organ with the nord itself or good sax solo sounds of the korg with the nord keys. Plus having the large split and layer opportunities of the korg. Today I already love my little korg X50 for these good facts. Sunny regards from Germany.

If 38 is young, then ... yes, I am.

I play in church on Sundays, and I play in two bands. One is a neo-soul/R&B band, and the other is a cover band that will play anything super-popular going as far back as the 70s.

In the church I play for, the sound is very eclectic, and the music can be quite aggressive at times.

Knowing this, I just kind of seek the best sounds, because my needs are too broad. Bread and butter sounds are essential, and great bass with excellent synth sounds in a top board are important. For my bottom board, excellent pianos are great, but I need other sounds as well like EPs, strings, etc.

[IHaveQuestions]

Would you say the Stage 3 is the ultimate for bread and butter sounds?

I don't think it is the very best board for any b&b sounds (maybe piano). What it does is put a lot of very-good-if-not-the-best sounds into a compact, lightweight package that operates with a lot of immediacy.

I think that’s a fair summary of it. I love the Stage for it’s overall work flow and the pianos and organs are very good. I’m not crazy about the EP samples and tend to use the Kronos modeled EP from Stage weighted keyboard.

As for what I'd pair it with, right now I'd look at the new Yamaha MODX. Yamaha tends to be strongest where Nord is weakest... non-keyboard based acoustic instruments (strings, brass, winds, guitars, etc.).

MODX sounds great and would be a good pairing if MIDI slave flexibility is not important. The Montage/MODX MIDI slave limitations have been well documented in other forums (Yamaha’s synth site and Keyboard Corner Forum) so I won’t belabor them here. Basically you can’t set the midi channel independently on each part in the performance. Here is one thread which discusses it:

http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthread ... ly_arrived!

Thay may or may not be important for you. It’s a show stopper for me and why I jumped ship to Kronos from Yamaha (after owning several generations of Motif) when it became apparent they probably weren’t going to address this issue in the Montage. Same limitation on MODX.

I did some more research.

Someone said I can't cover all bases in even two boards, but I got to thinking...

...since a Montage is not a workstation but is deep, and the Kronos is a workstation and is exceptionally deep, how much since does it make to pair those two? Shouldn't those two do about as good of a job as possible in a two board, no laptop setup?

I've considered from a Nord Stage 3 paired up with a Jupiter 80, too. Both are said to be gear purely towards live performance and sound great. Maybe not the best of the best, but not miles away?

[IHaveQuestions]

Thank you all for your input. I'm looking to purchase by Monday. I have a lot coming up, so I need to get this over and done with yesterday.

[anotherscott]

great bass with excellent synth sounds in a top board are important.

"Great bass" can mean different things. When I play left hand bass, I pretty much always use the sound of an electric bass, though even those can vary in character, of course. (Do you want the sound of a Fender or a Rick? Picked or fingered? etc.) One thing that can distinguish boards here is not so much the "quality" of the bass sound, but the variety you can choose from. Then you have jazz players who may want the sound of a string bass. A lot of other people like to use synth basses, there are some classic Moog bass sounds, or other more modern synth bass sounds, which can be a whole topic of its own (see https://www.google.com/search?q=modern+ ... rslutz.com ). I think that almost any board will have good bass sounds... whether they are great depends on your use and what you like.

"Excellent synth" is another thing that's hard to objectively define. Synths vary a lot in their sound characters and in their functionalities, and the sounds are even more subjective than things like piano, organ, strings, brass, etc., because there is no real world reference for what they "should" sound like. But people have preferences, sometimes on digital vs analog, or even among analogs, the sound of one brand vs. another. There is also a question of how important it is that it be "knobby" -- i.e. you can create and real-time tweak the sounds with a full array of dedicated controls, rather than, say, working largely from presets and maybe modifying sounds largely via menus or an external editor.

Question: does this top (synth and bass) board need to do both at the same time? i.e. you'll sometimes be playing bass with you left hand and synth with your right on the same board, simultaneously? Or at any given time, will it be doing just one or the other? (Remember, you may also have the option of sometimes using your other board for one of these functions, even if that isn't the "main" purpose of that board.)

since a Montage is not a workstation but is deep, and the Kronos is a workstation and is exceptionally deep, how much since does it make to pair those two?

Whether something is called a workstation has no bearing on either how well it sonically pairs with something else, nor how well it will work for the things you're asking about. The reason Kronos is called a workstation and Montage is not is that Korg included a fully editable multitrack sequencer in the Kronos, Yamaha did not include one in the Montage/MODX (including instead a much simpler "performance recorder" plus free Cubase AI software to load onto your computer for performing the more advanced sequencer functions). That's not to say that the pair might not make a perfectly good combo (despite overlaps), just that the workstation-ness is irrelevant. (BTW, the reason I am talking about Montage and MODX bascally interchangeably is that they have the same sounds, so if sounds are all that matters, one will work for you as well as the other. However, there are differences in features.)

Shouldn't those two do about as good of a job as possible in a two board, no laptop setup?

Okay, so it sounds like we're definitely talking about a desire to keep it to two boards, and no laptop. Good, we've eliminated some other variables.

Getting back to the NS3 then, sonically, I think most people who look to pair one will pick something with strong non-keyboard acoustic instrument sounds (strings, brass, winds, etc.), because that's where Nord is weakest. Not unusable by any means, but easily improved upon. From that perspective, the best boards to pair it with are probably Korg Kronos or Yamaha Montage/MODX, though their are also other boards that can work well, including other boards from those companies as well as Kurzweil and Roland. (The pros and cons of Kronos vs. Montage/MODX could be a whole other topic.)

But to get back to your situation, if you want two boards, should one of them be a Nord at all? This depends on the value you place on its strengths (and also whether those strengths are also covered adequately in whatever other board you choose). I'd say the biggest NS3 strengths are
* high quality tonewheel organ emulation with real-time drawbar control (more so on the models with "real" drawbars)
* wide range of quality piano sounds of entirely different characters
* easy real-time manipulation of effects
* a virtual analog synth section with immediate, direct, dedicated access to its controls for editing and real-time tweaking
* ability to easily load you own custom samples, and process them through the synth functions
* some nice performance capabilities for expressiveness... i.e. the pitch stick is a unique bender, the morph function allows you to easily assign the functions of the wheel/pedal/aftertouch
* a sound set that includes a lot of uncommon vintage keyboard sounds
* light travel weight for the functionality (particularly the 73/76)
* getting all of that in a single board... particularly including a drawbar organ and a dedicated knobby synth control surface, since if you want those two things, if you don't get a Nord Stage, you almost definitely need two boards just for those two functions, which could quickly bring you to needing a third board for other bread and butter sounds.

So to many of us here, when it comes to a pair, an NS3 and one of those boards mentioned in the earlier paragraph is pretty ideal. But if some of those Nord strengths are not overly important to you, some other pair of boards may serve you as well or better, especially if you can't find everything else you really want in just one other board.

Flipping it the other way, if someone had a Kronos and asked what would be a good board to pair it with, I think a lot of people would say Nord Stage 3... not so much because it adds quality sounds where Kronos is sonically weak (possible, but subjective), but more because it adds a different, more immediate way of working (albeit within a more limited sonic scope). You may or may not see value in that. If all you care about are the sounds themselves, and are not inclined to manipulate things in real time (i.e. if all you need to do is hit a button to call up a sound and then just play it), you may not care about a lot of what the Nord brings to the table.

[IHaveQuestions]

great bass with excellent synth sounds in a top board are important.

"Great bass" can mean different things. When I play left hand bass, I pretty much always use the sound of an electric bass, though even those can vary in character, of course. (Do you want the sound of a Fender or a Rick? Picked or fingered? etc.) One thing that can distinguish boards here is not so much the "quality" of the bass sound, but the variety you can choose from. Then you have jazz players who may want the sound of a string bass. A lot of other people like to use synth basses, there are some classic Moog bass sounds, or other more modern synth bass sounds, which can be a whole topic of its own (see https://www.google.com/search?q=modern+ ... rslutz.com ). I think that almost any board will have good bass sounds... whether they are great depends on your use and what you like.

"Excellent synth" is another thing that's hard to objectively define. Synths vary a lot in their sound characters and in their functionalities, and the sounds are even more subjective than things like piano, organ, strings, brass, etc., because there is no real world reference for what they "should" sound like. But people have preferences, sometimes on digital vs analog, or even among analogs, the sound of one brand vs. another. There is also a question of how important it is that it be "knobby" -- i.e. you can create and real-time tweak the sounds with a full array of dedicated controls, rather than, say, working largely from presets and maybe modifying sounds largely via menus or an external editor.

Question: does this top (synth and bass) board need to do both at the same time? i.e. you'll sometimes be playing bass with you left hand and synth with your right on the same board, simultaneously? Or at any given time, will it be doing just one or the other? (Remember, you may also have the option of sometimes using your other board for one of these functions, even if that isn't the "main" purpose of that board.)

since a Montage is not a workstation but is deep, and the Kronos is a workstation and is exceptionally deep, how much since does it make to pair those two?

Whether something is called a workstation has no bearing on either how well it sonically pairs with something else, nor how well it will work for the things you're asking about. The reason Kronos is called a workstation and Montage is not is that Korg included a fully editable multitrack sequencer in the Kronos, Yamaha did not include one in the Montage/MODX (including instead a much simpler "performance recorder" plus free Cubase AI software to load onto your computer for performing the more advanced sequencer functions). That's not to say that the pair might not make a perfectly good combo (despite overlaps), just that the workstation-ness is irrelevant. (BTW, the reason I am talking about Montage and MODX bascally interchangeably is that they have the same sounds, so if sounds are all that matters, one will work for you as well as the other. However, there are differences in features.)

Shouldn't those two do about as good of a job as possible in a two board, no laptop setup?

Okay, so it sounds like we're definitely talking about a desire to keep it to two boards, and no laptop. Good, we've eliminated some other variables.

Getting back to the NS3 then, sonically, I think most people who look to pair one will pick something with strong non-keyboard acoustic instrument sounds (strings, brass, winds, etc.), because that's where Nord is weakest. Not unusable by any means, but easily improved upon. From that perspective, the best boards to pair it with are probably Korg Kronos or Yamaha Montage/MODX, though their are also other boards that can work well, including other boards from those companies as well as Kurzweil and Roland. (The pros and cons of Kronos vs. Montage/MODX could be a whole other topic.)

But to get back to your situation, if you want two boards, should one of them be a Nord at all? This depends on the value you place on its strengths (and also whether those strengths are also covered adequately in whatever other board you choose). I'd say the biggest NS3 strengths are
* high quality tonewheel organ emulation with real-time drawbar control (more so on the models with "real" drawbars)
* wide range of quality piano sounds of entirely different characters
* easy real-time manipulation of effects
* a virtual analog synth section with immediate, direct, dedicated access to its controls for editing and real-time tweaking
* ability to easily load you own custom samples, and process them through the synth functions
* some nice performance capabilities for expressiveness... i.e. the pitch stick is a unique bender, the morph function allows you to easily assign the functions of the wheel/pedal/aftertouch
* a sound set that includes a lot of uncommon vintage keyboard sounds
* light travel weight for the functionality (particularly the 73/76)
* getting all of that in a single board... particularly including a drawbar organ and a dedicated knobby synth control surface, since if you want those two things, if you don't get a Nord Stage, you almost definitely need two boards just for those two functions, which could quickly bring you to needing a third board for other bread and butter sounds.

So to many of us here, when it comes to a pair, an NS3 and one of those boards mentioned in the earlier paragraph is pretty ideal. But if some of those Nord strengths are not overly important to you, some other pair of boards may serve you as well or better, especially if you can't find everything else you really want in just one other board.

Flipping it the other way, if someone had a Kronos and asked what would be a good board to pair it with, I think a lot of people would say Nord Stage 3... not so much because it adds quality sounds where Kronos is sonically weak (possible, but subjective), but more because it adds a different, more immediate way of working (albeit within a more limited sonic scope). You may or may not see value in that. If all you care about are the sounds themselves, and are not inclined to manipulate things in real time (i.e. if all you need to do is hit a button to call up a sound and then just play it), you may not care about a lot of what the Nord brings to the table.

You've been extremely helpful.

I've been researching all night. I'm tired, and I won't have the time to discuss this for the rest of the weekend, and I NEED to start this buying process by Monday. For the record, my equipment was ruined in a flood, so I have to get new stuff. Also, since I'm getting new stuff, I'm planning to not make previous mistakes, which is why I started doing a lot of research, and asking a lot of questions. I know I sound ignorant as hell in ways, but you can't be corrected if you aren't willing express your misinformed ideas freely.

In any case, I wanted to come but I want to come back and let you all know what I decided upon. It'd have been rude, imo, to not come back and say anything.

I decided to go with a Access Virus Ti2 as a top board, and a Montage as a bottom. Perhaps the ONLY reason I'm going that way is the boot time with the Kronos(2 minutes). The Montage should do a great to decent job for the various bread and butter sounds I need, and the Virus Ti2 should certainly do a superb job for my top board needs.

[IHaveQuestions]

great bass with excellent synth sounds in a top board are important.

"Great bass" can mean different things. When I play left hand bass, I pretty much always use the sound of an electric bass, though even those can vary in character, of course. (Do you want the sound of a Fender or a Rick? Picked or fingered? etc.) One thing that can distinguish boards here is not so much the "quality" of the bass sound, but the variety you can choose from. Then you have jazz players who may want the sound of a string bass. A lot of other people like to use synth basses, there are some classic Moog bass sounds, or other more modern synth bass sounds, which can be a whole topic of its own (see https://www.google.com/search?q=modern+ ... rslutz.com ). I think that almost any board will have good bass sounds... whether they are great depends on your use and what you like.

"Excellent synth" is another thing that's hard to objectively define. Synths vary a lot in their sound characters and in their functionalities, and the sounds are even more subjective than things like piano, organ, strings, brass, etc., because there is no real world reference for what they "should" sound like. But people have preferences, sometimes on digital vs analog, or even among analogs, the sound of one brand vs. another. There is also a question of how important it is that it be "knobby" -- i.e. you can create and real-time tweak the sounds with a full array of dedicated controls, rather than, say, working largely from presets and maybe modifying sounds largely via menus or an external editor.

Question: does this top (synth and bass) board need to do both at the same time? i.e. you'll sometimes be playing bass with you left hand and synth with your right on the same board, simultaneously? Or at any given time, will it be doing just one or the other? (Remember, you may also have the option of sometimes using your other board for one of these functions, even if that isn't the "main" purpose of that board.)

since a Montage is not a workstation but is deep, and the Kronos is a workstation and is exceptionally deep, how much since does it make to pair those two?

Whether something is called a workstation has no bearing on either how well it sonically pairs with something else, nor how well it will work for the things you're asking about. The reason Kronos is called a workstation and Montage is not is that Korg included a fully editable multitrack sequencer in the Kronos, Yamaha did not include one in the Montage/MODX (including instead a much simpler "performance recorder" plus free Cubase AI software to load onto your computer for performing the more advanced sequencer functions). That's not to say that the pair might not make a perfectly good combo (despite overlaps), just that the workstation-ness is irrelevant. (BTW, the reason I am talking about Montage and MODX bascally interchangeably is that they have the same sounds, so if sounds are all that matters, one will work for you as well as the other. However, there are differences in features.)

Shouldn't those two do about as good of a job as possible in a two board, no laptop setup?

Okay, so it sounds like we're definitely talking about a desire to keep it to two boards, and no laptop. Good, we've eliminated some other variables.

Getting back to the NS3 then, sonically, I think most people who look to pair one will pick something with strong non-keyboard acoustic instrument sounds (strings, brass, winds, etc.), because that's where Nord is weakest. Not unusable by any means, but easily improved upon. From that perspective, the best boards to pair it with are probably Korg Kronos or Yamaha Montage/MODX, though their are also other boards that can work well, including other boards from those companies as well as Kurzweil and Roland. (The pros and cons of Kronos vs. Montage/MODX could be a whole other topic.)

But to get back to your situation, if you want two boards, should one of them be a Nord at all? This depends on the value you place on its strengths (and also whether those strengths are also covered adequately in whatever other board you choose). I'd say the biggest NS3 strengths are
* high quality tonewheel organ emulation with real-time drawbar control (more so on the models with "real" drawbars)
* wide range of quality piano sounds of entirely different characters
* easy real-time manipulation of effects
* a virtual analog synth section with immediate, direct, dedicated access to its controls for editing and real-time tweaking
* ability to easily load you own custom samples, and process them through the synth functions
* some nice performance capabilities for expressiveness... i.e. the pitch stick is a unique bender, the morph function allows you to easily assign the functions of the wheel/pedal/aftertouch
* a sound set that includes a lot of uncommon vintage keyboard sounds
* light travel weight for the functionality (particularly the 73/76)
* getting all of that in a single board... particularly including a drawbar organ and a dedicated knobby synth control surface, since if you want those two things, if you don't get a Nord Stage, you almost definitely need two boards just for those two functions, which could quickly bring you to needing a third board for other bread and butter sounds.

So to many of us here, when it comes to a pair, an NS3 and one of those boards mentioned in the earlier paragraph is pretty ideal. But if some of those Nord strengths are not overly important to you, some other pair of boards may serve you as well or better, especially if you can't find everything else you really want in just one other board.

Flipping it the other way, if someone had a Kronos and asked what would be a good board to pair it with, I think a lot of people would say Nord Stage 3... not so much because it adds quality sounds where Kronos is sonically weak (possible, but subjective), but more because it adds a different, more immediate way of working (albeit within a more limited sonic scope). You may or may not see value in that. If all you care about are the sounds themselves, and are not inclined to manipulate things in real time (i.e. if all you need to do is hit a button to call up a sound and then just play it), you may not care about a lot of what the Nord brings to the table.

I came back.

Something just occurred to me.

While I have no budget, do I want to spend a ton for a synth, in which I'll only use a limited amount of sounds?

Wouldn't it make sense to go two all-purpose boards, that can serve the function of a synth. At least, then, you still get quality synth sounds - maybe to a lesser extent - but you get so much more than that?

I became so obsessed with synth sounds, but I'm realizing that, many sound great, but many have no use for what I do. That Access Virus is pricey, but I'm listening to videos of the presets, and a handful sound usable. You'll get that with any board, but at least a all-in-one board will, once again, cover that and MORE.

[anotherscott]

I decided to go with a Access Virus Ti2 as a top board, and a Montage as a bottom...The Montage should do a great to decent job for the various bread and butter sounds I need, and the Virus Ti2 should certainly do a superb job for my top board needs.

Perfectly good combo. I've never played a Virus, but by reputation, they're excellent. Sonically, the only weaknesses in that combo compared to a Nord are the clonewheel organ (though the Montage still has plenty of perfectly usable organ sounds), and maybe acoustic piano, but that's subjective, and again, the Montage still has nice piano sounds regardless. I actually haven't yet had a chance to compare the newest Yamaha piano sounds to my Nord favorites, so I can't even say for certain right now which I prefer, I can only say that at least Nord has a greater variety. (You can also load other piano sounds into the Montage, it should be compatible with all the third-party Motif pianos... and one of the advantages of the Montage over the MODX is that it has more available user memory for loading additional sample content like that.)

do I want to spend a ton for a synth, in which I'll only use a limited amount of sounds?...Wouldn't it make sense to go two all-purpose boards, that can serve the function of a synth. At least, then, you still get quality synth sounds - maybe to a lesser extent - but you get so much more than that?

Sure, that's another way to go. Similarly, for most of my gigs, I don't do enough real "synth" work to justify bringing a dedicated synth... which gets back to one reason I like the NS3, I get to have an analog-ish knobby synth without bringing an extra board. (Though in theory, I could also address that somewhat by tossing something like a little Roland Boutique module onto on of my other boards.) But you know, on some gigs I don't have great need for deep synth OR clonewheel organ functionality, and then I might bring two boards, neither of which is the Nord. Lately I've done some gigs with the Korg SV1 on bottom (used only for maybe 10 sounds) and a Yamaha MOXF up top (which would now be the MODX), because I really like playing the SV1, and my Nord and Yamaha are both semi-weighted boards (I miss having a hammer action when it's not there). If I had been up for three boards on the gig though, I'd have added the NS3 and gotten my clonewheel organ and my knobby synth in just one additional board. Those things just weren't so necessary for these gigs, so I made a different choice because I wanted the hammer action and some of the sounds of the SV1, and couldn't justify bringing a third board. But sure, I could have easily done those gigs with the NS3 on bottom instead of the SV1. It would have been lighter and given me more sonic variety (including the clonewheel and synth). But sonically, while the SV1 is capable of far less, it did enough for what I needed, and within its small range of capabilities, it's what I preferred to play, in combination with the semi-weighted Yamaha.

So getting back to your rig, let's assume that, even if the Montage doesn't give you the very best of everything,it gives you "plenty good enough" for all the sounds you need. The one drawback of the Montage, as smullins alluded to, is that there are limitations in its ability to let you add some other set of keys to also trigger its sounds in whatever combination you want with whatever combination of sounds you're playing on the Montage's own keys (something the Kronos handles well). But as long as you're fine with using the Montage for Montage sounds and your other board just for its own sounds, it won't be an issue. So then you're just back to finding the top board that will give you the synth and bass sounds you want, while also perhaps bringing some other useful stuff to the table, at lower-than-Virus cost... Roland FA-06/FA-07 come to mind. You could also look at their VR-09B/VR-730 which are a little more direct and "Nord-like" in their operation (including giving you drawbar organ control), but are less flexible overall. The FA and VR both have Roland's SuperNatural Synth, but the FA has on-board editing whereas on the VR, you use an external editor.

[Mr_-G-]

I do not think I would buy a new virus now, but instead wait for the Waldorf Kyra module (supposed to be out at NAMM 19) .
I agree that you should have a look at the MODX8.

[IHaveQuestions]

So getting back to your rig, let's assume that, even if the Montage doesn't give you the very best of everything,it gives you "plenty good enough" for all the sounds you need. The one drawback of the Montage, as smullins alluded to, is that there are limitations in its ability to let you add some other set of keys to also trigger its sounds in whatever combination you want with whatever combination of sounds you're playing on the Montage's own keys (something the Kronos handles well). But as long as you're fine with using the Montage for Montage sounds and your other board just for its own sounds, it won't be an issue. So then you're just back to finding the top board that will give you the synth and bass sounds you want, while also perhaps bringing some other useful stuff to the table, at lower-than-Virus cost... Roland FA-06/FA-07 come to mind. You could also look at their VR-09B/VR-730 which are a little more direct and "Nord-like" in their operation (including giving you drawbar organ control), but are less flexible overall. The FA and VR both have Roland's SuperNatural Synth, but the FA has on-board editing whereas on the VR, you use an external editor.

Ok.

From everything I reading, the best all-in-one boards - in regards to the broad range of sounds - around are the Montage, Genos, Jupiter 80, Kronos, Stage 3, and Forte?

I've seen people talk up the Jupiter 80's ability to sound big because of all of the stacking. Also, shouldn't the Jupiter 80 basically be a Roland FA on steroids? How do you feel about the Jupiter 80 over the FA?

Also, of the other boards I mentioned - outside of the Stage 3 and Kronos, which has been discussed - do you feel they are roughly Montage level, even if slightly above or below, in regards to all-in-one sounds?