Don't buy a Stage 2 the sounds are not good enough.

[ZeroZero]

Now this is all my opinion, only. I expect some people will hate what i am about to say, but I say save your bucks.


The Nord Stage 2 revision B, has gone back to the shop as it simply is not good enough for the money.

I have a nord electro 2 61 for a few years, I upgraded principally to find better pianos. I use the Nord as a controller keyboard for my studio (as an Axiom broke down). I use TruePianos in my studio and find it very good (the diamond module). If you want ot hear it there is a free demo on their site and videos. Its as good as it sounds on the video and is very responsive.

I found the Electro 2 well built and pretty good as a hammond, but the piano was unuseable on the electro.

So, I bought a Nord stage 2 revision B and expected a BIG improvement

Improvement - yes - big improvement no - definitely NOT.

Now I have spent a week full time with this keyboard and have read the manual. I have listened very carefully to all of the Pianos in Xl or as large as they go. I have listened carefuly to the hammond too.

I love the build quality and i love the color, the software seems stable and I love the design of the interface but....

I have not found a single sound that has satisfied my ears.

First the Hammond. I won a Native instruments B4 and also a KeyB duo. Out of these three keyboards the B4 has the best sound to me. My KeyB cost a lot of money but the software was unstable and the Nord stage 2, which was most expensive, comes in last

I linked up the MIDI of the Nord and I compared the B4 to the Nord Stage 2 (revision b) - I tried various settings of chorus and vibrato and various settings of drawbars with and without Leslie slow and fast. I got a much warmer throbby kind of sound from the B4. The Nord seemed much thinner and on occasions waspy.

Second the synth. I was hoping that the addition of sample capability would enable the synth to make juicer sounds. to an extent this is true, but...

I listened to all the samples in the sample bank and i found them all very old fashioned and uninspiring - things like the vocal samples sounded like the sort of sample you used to get five years ago on a freebie CD - no real quality.

I want to say that i am not a snyth expert, I do use Omnisphere and Absynth and I have had a lot of other synths that are not as good as these. The sounds I heard in the stage (using the supplied synth program examples, were ordinary and uninspiring - mostly cheesy eighties disco. I tried using the synth to create my own sounds - didn't get anywhere. Now I have said i am not AN EXPERT, but when i tweak absynth or Omnisphere, I get results in minutes, and i am not talking eighties disco. Now I know omnisphere is a fantastic synth and it is hard to match, even so I found that the Nord synth was not as good as say Crystal (free synth - KVR) and certaintly nort a touch on Absynth.

On to the pianos:
I dowloaded the best of each piano, and compared them one at a time to TruePainos. Not a single Piano could drag me away from TruePainos. Now you may say that my ears are addicted to this sound (and you might be right -sign of a good piano). Obviously there are many piano sounds, but I found that playing runs on any of them the touch felt a bit lifeless the upper registers uninspiring (no real ring to them), and the lower registers a bit of a dirge. Now they are all better than the Electro 2, but that was simply unuseable, they do stand up ok to the avergae synth, but this is what they are average, not great. yes you can use them and they WILL do a job, but that the best I can say. I would have been prepared to accept that some of the painos were better in a particular range, but they were not.
I compared the electric painos to Painoteq demos - the electric painos were better - on the whole. They all seemed again to be a bit lifeless

Then it dawn on me.. what do they say "You cant get a quart into a pint pot"

This machine is never going to hack it with the tiny memory it has.

Everything (again this is my opinion only) is a compromise, everything is crammed in.

Either its bit rate, lossy compression, lack of layers, small sample size, stretching samples over too many pitches

Something HAS to give if you wat to cram so much into such a tiny space.

Now i dont know where they compromise but compromise they do (why else offer different sizes of pianos)

to my personal ears, there is not one single great sound on this machine.

I phoned the shop and its gone back.

So people, I warnt you listen very carefully and not on earphones, before you buy...

In my opinion, though the build quality and layout of this keyboard is excellent, the SOUND quality is NOT, its the sort of sound I would expect from a keyboard worth a thousand or less, and then one that was built five or ten years ago.

Thanks to ALL the nice people here


I suppose I will get flamed (such is life)

but my recommendation is DONT BUY A STAGE 2.

Zero

[Hanon_CTS]

Hello ZeroZero,
I think that you pre-qualified your words very well as "being your own opinion".
To which, you are certainly entitled to express.
The comment about getting flamed is the part that I take greatest issue with.
This shows that you don't know this forum, or it's users at all.
Someone would have great difficulty in finding threads, or posts that even come close to a flame.
I'm sorry that the NS2 didn't work out for you, clearly they're not for everybody.
Cheers, Hanon

[ZeroZero]

You make a fair point there Hanon. I take no issue with anoyone on the forum, what I do take issue with is Nord selling this keyboard for so much cash with so little improvement or quality.

[Ecaroh]

NS2 is far from perfect thing, I agree with Zero about that. And it cost a lot.

But my personal opinion is that there's no better option for myself at the moment, so there aren't any perfect keyboard solutions. Ok, maybe Kronos can be serious competitor but I have to check it when I really have a chance play it. From net demos I can hardly say anything about its sounds.

What I was most disappointed with my NS2 was its synth part, but still it wasn't any surprise: I never liked Nord Wave.

But for sure there are some very good sounds in NS2: Pianos and E-pianos. And organ isn't maybe perfect but it's good anyway. This combined with a great portability (I have NS2 76) I haven't regretted any single moment after I put my money to this great thing.

[Nordfan]

Hi ZeroZero,

It's hard for me to read what you write about the NS2. But at least you got a clear opinion on the NS2! And that's what's most important!

However, just a few sidenotes. It keeps me surpised that people see the NS2 as some sort of workstation. Please, it is NOT a workstation, it is a stage piano...... two totally different worlds in my opinion. The Synth section should be regarded as "an extra". And with this in mind it is a damn good "extra". There is no other instrument that offers this sound quality AND quantity for pianos and epianos as well as for organs as the NS2.
The Kronos however is a workstation. It has good sounds on the whole palette. But they are good, not spectacular. So that means that a Kronos is maybe a bigger compromise??? PLease note, that I'm not a technicall guy but I can remember some topics that the the much acclaimed SSD memory isn't that perfect as what everybody says (long loading times etc etc).

Furthermore, there is so much fuzz about the piano sounds. If they are truely that bad, why do I see on every stage with serious musicians a Nord Stage EX/2?? And why do all the educated/professional pianists prefer the sounds of a Nord Piano/Stage? I'm just afraid that our generation (the ones that are growing up with synths and digital pianos) doesn't know how a real piano sounds. We're getting too familiarized with the synthetic piano sounds of these days (maybe a little overstated, but you get my point).

To wrap up, it all comes down to the management of expectations. I guess you had your expectations wrong. That sucks because now you've wasted your time on a great instrument that didn't meet your expectations. So maybe the name of this thread should be changed from "Don't buy a Stage 2 the sounds are not good enough" to "Buy this stage instrument once you really know what you want and need"

Just out of curiousity, which instrument will you take in stead of the NS2?

[organut]

ZeroZero, I am sorry, but your post is pure bullshit.

[Ecaroh]

organaut: that's exactly what I thought too, but you said it...

[ZeroZero]

Hey I got flames (LOL)

Nordfan:
You make good points. Yes, the Nord Stage is primariliy aimed at the stage - it can cut through the mix. In the studio no piano comes up to scratch.
I suppose running a paino through a PA is going to loose some subtlety so you dont have to put it in in the first place.

I have listened to some Top of the range Yamahas since and although they are better, they are not killer sounds either. It seems my journey a 'stage' instrument with an excellent piano (and a decent, doesn' t have to be the best, drawbar H) is going to be a long one.

I hope that the price drop in SSD is going to kick in soon. I can just feel a game changer coming from somewhere....

Next week I am checking out the Yamahas, Kronos, Phantom again.

[olafhaugan]

I love my NordStage compact 2. And I think it got great improvements. (Except for the ac piano that i dont like compared to my motif xs)

[Frantz]

Hi ZeroZero !

Your opinion is solid and justified, but your recommandation is too much
I am sorry that you are soo disapointed by the NS2, and I hope you'll get the best solution that suits your needs.
You made some good remarks about the NS2, and pointed out some weaknesses you have encountered while you were trying to use it.
Maybe you will get some flames in return of a few provocating / exagerated words you wrote, but that is not important.

I share some of your opinions, I moved from a Roland RD 300sx + Computer to a NS2.
I bought a few great sounding VST too (Lounge Lizard, String Studio, V-Station, Korg Legacy).
VB3 is not too bad as well.
I recently tried TruePianos thanks to you, and I agree with you that it sounds very good and is very efficient.
To my ears those sound better : RD 700, Kronos, Nord.
But I agree with you, the deal is not easy.

If the Kronos had a better user interface, I would have kept it.
If Jupiter 80 had more sounds and more edit options on SuperNatural acoustic sounds, I would have kept it (you cant put your own samples in it).
If a macbook was cheaper and software had no compatibility or stability issues, I would still go for a NS2 because I need piano keyboard to play music and got all in one for the same price !

Do you play live or studio ?
For studio, you probably don't need a NS2 in your setup, with the softwares you have.
For Live, I would not dare using a computer, the interface is simply not easy enough, even with some controlers (Korg Nano Kontrol ...)
It can work perfectly for hours and just crash during your live.
That makes quite a few pieces of software to keep working together ...
You should at least have a dedicated macbook for that.

I am quite sure you are very confident in using a computer, as I am, and like to share this with you :
I work as a computer programmer since 15 years and could solve any problem in a very short time, I could organise myself to have everything backed up ready to install from scratch very quickly for instance. I tried many sofware and hardware configuration, known as very stable.
If that was not to play Live, I would have kept my Roland RD 300sx + Computer + VSTs.
I even tried just adding a m-audio 61 controler keyboard with that. (the Roland is not easy with splits and extern control).
I will probably take my computer in the future, but as a tool, an optional sound source, I will still have the NS2 with all my main sounds (the "external" part is easy and well integrated, controling some VST via USB-1 midi is easy).

On the NS2, I found everything I was looking for, in term of sounds, sound quality, and efficiency.
I "love" this NS2 for what it is.

I hope you'll get the best setup for you quickly, so these technical/business things won't take too much time over your music.

Cheers,
frantzkb.