This 'unofficial' Forum is dedicated to the Clavia Nord Keyboards, including the Nord Stage, Nord Electro and Nord Piano. Discuss any issues around Nord's keyboards, share your favorite patches, samples, and music. We are not affiliated with Clavia!
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The Nord Wurli's don't compare well even to Yamaha's stock samples, Korg's Kronos Wurli, or to my personal third-party favorite, the Purgatory Creek Wurli 200A, which I've used in both my MODX and PC4. The only current manufacturers I can think of that have worse Wurli's than Nord are Roland and Casio. Not that Nord's are unusable (vs Roland's are IMO), but they're definitely not one of the high points of the Nord sound engines.Gambold wrote: 28 Jun 2025, 04:17 >then of course the sampled Wurlitzer in the Nord falls short of the original, both in terms of sound and feel.<
My guess is far more in feel than in sound. And since you know what you are playing, confirmation bias is playing a big role here.
It's the same when you see those videos of people comparing $4000 Les Paul guitars with $600 dollar ones. They basically sound the same, but of course they "feel" different for the player, because the super-expensive one is made with better materials and has a lot of finishing touches by hand. So as a player one naturally thinks it sounds better too. And maybe it does, but not by same factor as the price difference.
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The Soft Grand is actually quite good - crank the high EQ some, maybe the bright filter, some compression, and it's the best "felt piano"/cinematic piano I've heard in hardware by a mile. If not better than dedicated VI's I've used. When it was released I definitely was underwhelmed, but now that I own an NS4, I've gotten a surprising amount of mileage out of that piano. What's funny is that it's a better "felt upright" than the actual Felt Upright, which I deleted quickly.Gambold wrote: 30 Jun 2025, 02:27 It's true, Nord has bailed on updating their Wurlitzer samples. The current offering is 12 years old.
But then, Nord has pretty much bailed on updating piano samples in general. They keep releasing new keyboards with an ever-older flagship grand piano in the A11 slot. How much ground can you pound with the White Grand? Apparently quite a lot. That sample is now 6 years old and counting.
It used to be a much-publicized promise by Nord that "regular" piano library updates were part of what you paid for. They quietly removed that language from their website in the past two years. And the most recent ones: Soft Grand, Pearl Upright, and Felt Upright all are seriously under-whelming or outright suck. Here's the list for those keeping score at home:
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