It's OK to vent your frustrations, of course, and if you think the NS3 is not living up to your expectations, no-one here will try to persuade you to keep it.
I'm just trying to help by explaining what happens and what you could to differently, in case you like other parts of the NS3 enough to do what is needed to make it work reliably with a rotor/sustain pedal.
Your NS3 costs around 3500 EUR, I guess. A new sustain pedal costs around 0.5% to 1% hereof. I don't know how much you will loose by selling it (the Nord, not the sustain pedal)?
Kaffimusic wrote:Okay, let´s say the pedals indeed send onoffonoffonoffon in a fracture of a second, before they are finally hold pressed in a stable state.
So why does sustain work nevertheless and rotary not?
Sustain is enabled when the pedal sees the "on" (pressed) state. The NS3 starts a decay phase when you release the keys and the pedal is not pressed down. If you then press sustain, it "halts" the decay and changes to sustain -- you can try to e.g. hit a chord while holding sustain, then releasing it and pressing it quickly -- you can then "catch" the notes and they go to sustain again.
So if you have a sustain phase with many short non-sustaining parts (the on-OFF-on parts), you cannot really hear the difference between one that just sustains and one that sustains 99% of the time.
Also, it's possible that you have more contact bounce on releasing the pedal than when pressing it. You will then hear even less of an impact on sustain (i.e. it only impacts how quickly it starts to decay), but it will of course still impact heavily the rotor toggle -- depending on whether the total number of bounces is even or uneven...
If you don't trust me, it's easy to verify yourself. Just hook up your NS3 to a computer and look at the MIDI data that is being sent when you press and (especially) release sustain.
Sometimes it´s on, sometimes not, altough a stable "ON" is established?
No. It's not a stable "on" -- it's a series of off-on-off cycles. The fast ones in the microseconds interval are filtered by the Nord's de-bounce algorithms/hardware already, but you very likely have some much slower bounces. I think it has been mentioned that you can see the rotor LED flicker, so some of the bounces may be happening on the 10-100 milliseconds scale.
And as mentioned, the rotor toggle depends on whether the total number of off-on-off cycles is even or odd whereas the sustain just takes the "current" state and in most cases works even with some contact bounce.
Out of curiosity, do you also use the pedal as a toggle on the other instruments?
Sustain is always on, when pressed with one of those pedals that are "worn off". Why do other instruments do not care?
A delay with the switch? With the rotary on/off? A microsecond. Really? WHO cares?
Not microseconds, but in your case it may be much longer. Have a look at e.g.
https://my.eng.utah.edu/~cs5780/debouncing.pdf for some hideous examples of bounce above 100 ms... These are very difficult to deal with for any instrument.
As for who cares, of course, I don't need to care; I just assumed you cared that it didn't work and just try to help you
I read that as a flaw with the Nord.
I guess the NS3 won´t become old together with me. Like we say in German. I am kind of annoyed of that thing.
You see. This is supposed to be a professional tool. To be used on stage, have some sturdyness and simply do not care. I paid a lot more than for other stuff and this is not really an instrument that is packed with overwhelming features. What do I get for my money? A diva that needs some special attention.
Your pedal is broken.
Using a broken pedal as a toggle switch will cause problems for most instruments at some point.
Based on my own experience, pedals wear out (even the more expensive ones) and needs to be replaced, as do keyboard stands and connectors and cables and other stuff you use with professional instruments and which needs to be of sufficient quality also to hold up to heavy use.
Maybe the Nord is more sensitive, I don't know, but in case you reconsider and don't sell the keyboard now, either 1) get a better pedal, or 2) don't use the pedal as a toggle but use it as a switch that switches to fast rotor when held only.
As for whether the Nord delivers value to you, only you can decide.
Hope this helps to explain what goes on and what you could do?
(just kidding)
