Nord User Forum

Hi to every one..

I´m a guitar player and i compose music for my post-rock band. I´m also composing the keyboard sound for the band. So the thing is i´m doing now a lot of sounds like textures, low ends and ambient and organic analog synth sounds in the computer thouth the Kontakt vst and korg legacy. We are using my nord stage 2 in live as a main keyboard and i´m using the wav files that i created in kontakt thougth the Nord Stage. I love the warm and deep dark synth sounds and textures.
SO my cuestion is; I want to buy a shytn with a sampler funcion in order to have moore sampler sound sounding at the same time with the stage 2. May be even controll these new synth thougt the Nord Stage also. The sampler función is basic for me now (and because i want to load a long wav files as textures i need that the synth sampler have a good cuality sound of the sampler that i preloaded). I will like if these new synth sounds are focus on these dark athmosferic sounds it will be great also to use his own sounds also.
Someone recomend me the waldorf blofeld keyboard for this sounds and becuase it have 60 M of sampler and i´m thinking also in the nord Wave. The Wave it cost tree times moore as i can see now it only have moore sampler memory and intutive controlls and you can split the keyboard which is great, but i think is too much to cost tree times no? What do you think? It also the nord wave out of produccion? I don´t see in thomman and other shops where i use normally buy. Which of these two synths samples is better for waht i need? Do you recommend me another sampler shynt also.


Thanks for your time.

Chema

Hi!
I have had both and play/write songs in a Joy Division type band.
I sing and play guitar live, and a bit of synth sometimes,we also have a dedicated synthplayer.

I have had both the Blofeld keyboard with samplelicense and the Nord Wave.
Sold both but I am actually buying a new Nord Wave within a few weeks.

I have some analog synts, Minimoog, Micromoog and Polivoks and an EMAX sampler that really mangles the sounds in an amazing way.
These sounds are something we want to bring to the stage as much as possible.
Currently our keyboard player has a Nord Lead A1, but if I buy a Nord wave, I can make the samples at home and he or me myself can play it live (I also play guitar, but can alternate a bit)

So maybe we are in a somewhat similar situation.

The main reason why I choose the Nord Wave now over the Blofeld are a couple of things:
Sound quality, the Blofeld DAC is 16 bit /44Khz, the wave is 24 bit. The wave simply sounds a lot better for samples than the harsher Blofeld.
Ease of use: The Wave has a much better sample editor to edit keymaps and transfer samples to the synt.
Knobs: The wave has knobs for everything, easy to tweak the samples live.
Effects: The effects in the wave, although much more limited than the Blofeld, has knobs for each function and sound A LOT better.
Memory: The wave has an insane 180MB of flash RAM... and also uses lossless compression, so in reality you get 540MB of RAM.
Sounds: You can use the samples to modulate FM sounds, this sounds amazing and unique, more like a Synclavier/Fairlight or similar.


So what are the drawbacks, because there are some.

For live it has one MAJOR drawback.
It has no splitpoint, yes you read it right, you cannot put two sounds on different parts of the keyboard of the Nord wave....
You can however put how many sounds you want on the keyboard as individual samples, by using the sample editor, not exactly the same thing though...
For having an "analog" synt live, the Nord lead A1 is a lot easier to use in this regard.

The keyboard is better in the Blofeld.
It has no arpeggiator
It has no Unison mode, somewhat made up for with an excellent chorus.

But for me the samples win, and its possible to use it as for instance Depeche Mode did with their EMAX samplers live,
to bring studio sounds live, by assigning them to different parts of the keyboard.

Hope this was somewhat helpfull!

If you only need to trigger long background pads and you won't really be "playing" the synth...wouldn't it be much easier and cheaper to just play back an mp3 file?

Spider wrote:If you only need to trigger long background pads and you won't really be "playing" the synth...wouldn't it be much easier and cheaper to just play back an mp3 file?

+1 or get something like an Akai MPX8 (if you prefer to use a dedicated hardware and not a computer/tablet)

I'm thinking seriously to buy a Macbook for the price of the nord wave and a sound card with 8 or 10 outs and send with ableton guitar loops bass loops and samplers to a different channel of the mixer and control the computer from my midi pedalboard boos es8. I didint warm to do it in the beginning but I thin is the best option for a 3 members band.. What do you think??

Yes, if you need background samples and loops, definitely the Wave is the wrong choice.
If only because it needs 2 hands...and you only have 6 in all the band