Nord User Forum

Yes, but what I was getting at was that "why not encourage some 3rd party devs to sample pianos or convert their libraries to nord format for a fair price" isn't doable without involving Nord.
And since they're the only ones with npno samples I guess they don't want to spread it to others.

So to Nord this is not an issue. It's strategy.
Can be because they don't believe it would pay off.
Or it can be because they want full control over the user experience of their products (aside from the nsmp sample sounds).

This is a little Apple vs Android in how new apps are treated.
Android is super open and everyone is in it to make a buck. If You install an app that messes up your phone you only get to blame yourself.
Apple is prioritizing the user experience over financial gains in their app testing, approval, etc. Apple wants you to be happy with the performance of the device, and no crap-app should be allowed to compromise that.

I fully agree with the Rhodes stuff. Ever since Keyscape came out (three years ago now), the Rhodes samples in it are... well, let's just say, #1 across the internet. There are no better Rhodes samples, and I've heard so many.

What makes it the best? The attack, the "bell-like" tone, and the RELEASE... the Nord samples do not have that full release and realism. They sound good, but they're missing the magic Rhodes thing. Same with the Wurly. The Keyscape Wurly is tremendous. The buzz, the mechanical noises... the bark. It's there, in ways the stuff in the Nord just is not, at all.

The EP2 sample is only 6MB. Surely Nord can provide us a 50MB Rhodes sample with mechanical noises, the bell, the attack, the release sounds... ? Same with the Wurly? 6MB years ago? 50MB could easily fit a perfect Rhodes sample. Couldn't it? If not that, than certainly 100MB?

Sample size is an interesting area. The Nord piano sample sizes have been steadily growing over the years - as an example the Studio Grand 2 Large is 68mb, while the Velvet Grand Large, released four years later, is 106mb. That's a considerable increase in size for a sample with the same parameters (string resonance, etc). No explanation has been provided by Clavia for these big increases in sample size, although there has been educated speculation in this forum on the technical reasons.

I haven't seen any arguments put forward that the Velvet Large sounds any richer or more complex than the Studio Grand 2 Large. Indeed, the SG2 tends to notch higher than the Velvet in the occasional popularity polls we do around here. Given that Clavia has not promoted any reasons or benefits to this sample growth, one sometimes wonders if it is designed in part to encourage upgrade purchases to newer Nords with bigger memory. I know that one of my key reasons to upgrade my Electro would be for larger memory to run more of these "bigger" pianos. I don't flaw this business plan - ya gotta make money, and regular buys from your client base are essential - but I would like to know why these newer pianos are so much bigger in size.

As for the EPs, yes, they are all small but they too show a steady increase in growth. Putting aside the extra space that "amped" samples require, the EP1 is 6mb, and the EP8 Nefertiti is 20mb. Since we don't know how these are sampled any more than the pianos, it's the same question.