Nord User Forum

I would very much love to have a premium piano which takes the whole memory of 1 GB. I could live with the fact that there won‘t be any space left for others if this premium one would beat me out of my socks as we say in Germany. Source could be Steinway or Boesendorfer to my taste.

I‘ve already had some mail contact with clavia in January about that, I‘m still hoping.

Sunny regards

I'd be really happy with a new uber-mega-destroyer-huge piano, though I'll say I have enough options and varieties to be satisfied with the current library.

I would like Nord to focus on EPs again to update some of the older samples, and I'd also be thrilled with an updated and more nuanced CP80. Otherwise, I'm just here for the bitching, LOL.

Clavia did update the EPs a while back with their Enhanced Version updates. I think this is all we are going to see in that regard, and the enhanced versions *are* improvements. I think a lot of the dissatisfaction with Clavia's EP sounds is really a dissatisfaction with their keybeds, which don't provide the kind of "Rhodesy" feel that makes a sample jump. Certainly the semi-weighted waterfall keybed on the Electro is far from the feel of a Rhodes or Wurli.

As far as piano updates, it's true that most other companies don't offer regular updates, but Clavia has wrapped that promise into their marketing and their price. So I feel they are obligated to come up with regular new piano samples. That doesn't have to mean once every six months, but it does need to mean more than once every four years. We did get the White Grand two years ago but I don't think it was the slam-dunk that we'd hoped for. Maybe it *is* time to revisit the older, classic samples like the Lady D, Bosendorfer, Fazioli and Yamaha and update them. They are all about a decade old now.

The same goes for the old uprights - I'm not sure the Baby or Bambino have much staying power but I know many players here love the Romantic, Rain, and Black. All of these are a decade old, how about some updated samples of them?

I will add a +1 for new samples.

Love what we have, but part of the appeal of Nord to me was the excitement of trying something new when a new piano was released. Taking that new sample and thinking, I want to play everything I know again because it gives it a different edge to the sounds I am already used to. It takes what has become mundane and gets you excited about it again.

I used to upgrade boards when things felt stale, Nord kept that exciting for me with the frequent releases through 2013-2016 ish then after that it seems to have gone very quiet for piano's indeed.

I doubt the competition is doing a lot extra though... Yamaha is still pushing out on the latest YC range - the CFX as the main flagship sound which has been around a decade, and the S700 which first came out on the S90 yearsss ago.
Rolands still sound the same as ever,to my ears, nothing new from Korg despite all the huge sample space. Kurzweil still using their 'Acclaimed' German D and Japanese samples which have also been around a while.

Someone needs to lend these guys some pianos to sample

Gambold wrote:Yeah, you'd think with the past year of Queen/Freddie Mercury overkill, which has over-run everything from Ted Lasso soundtracks to elevator lobby music, they would get a Bechstein up and running for us.

I too have anxiously awaited the introduction of new Piano, however I cut Nord a little bit of slack because of the pandemic. In addition to a Bechstein, I would love to have another Baldwin. When Bambino was released I was happy to see a Baldwin piano recognized, but also a bit disappointed that it wasn't their upright "Hamilton" 243 studio piano (over 500,000 produced and in more schools than any other in the USA) or their 9' SD-10 grand piano, that deserve recognition in the Nord Piano library for their sound. I have to admit I'm somewhat biased, I grew up with the company as my father worked for Baldwin for over 35 years. Here's an interesting page about them from a dealer in Hollywood for those less familiar with the company where I also found out that Baldwin owned Bechstein from 1963 to 1986: https://www.hollywoodpiano.com/piano-ca ... win-piano/

For whatever reason, I'm pretty happy with what's there. At least, for now. Since we haven't had an awesome grand in a while, I'm spending more time with the uprights, working on better EP and clav sounds, and am finding great things with the layered digital pianos. There is plenty there when you go looking.

[quote=I have to admit I'm somewhat biased, I grew up with the company as my father worked for Baldwin for over 35 years. [/quote]

You're justifiably proud. I played a 9' Baldwin grand, and I'm assuming it was the SD-10, at Hofstra University here in NY at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse a number of years ago. It was a magnificent instrument! The photo is from that concert (sorry for the old website ad, best I could do).

I pop in every month or so to see if Clavia is continuing to honor their value-added promotion and have actually uploaded a new piano to the library.

>Our exclusive Nord Piano Library is regularly updated<

Still a big electric nope. And the years tick on by.

Raise your hand if Stage 3-only sound banks aren't making your day.

--Gambold

FZiegler wrote:Quickly explained: The Nord Piano 5 is the first product that uses the Sample Library 4 file format. Which has some advantages for a more natural vibrato and Round Robin samples. That's neither a new instrument nor a sound lab, but a sampling technology.

It means that there are multipe samples for each note and they are randomly picked each time you hit the key. Which means that fast repetitions of a single note will sound slightly differently for each stroke. The factory samples of the Piano 5 do have that already, but the full sample library doesn't seem to be finished yet.

Perhaps the round robin samples and engine in my Piano 5 is an important part of why, to my ears, the Piano 5 works and sounds so much better than my Stage 3 did. Thanks for that info, FZiegler.

But the piano samples do not have the round robin feature, only the synth samples.