Nord User Forum

Hi everyone.

I'm making up my mind whether to get an Electro 6D or a Stage 3 (today!). It's a question of budget vs. features. The Electro might win since I do have other Synths.
Apart from the obvious differences, the most important point for me is:

1.
How much Piano Memory is still vacant (of the initial 1024MB) when the Electro 6D comes shipped with its Factory sounds?
I love the Nord Piano Libraries, and I wonder if 1GB satisfies my needs when it comes to taking a multitude of vintage keyboard and piano sounds to the road.

2.
Does the Library size depict the mere file size or the actual memory consumption in the Electro?
Example: Let's assume that there were 512MB vacant in the Piano section (just a guess). Could I then simply add a bunch of other Nord Piano Libraries (and upload them to the Electro) until their accumulated size (as specified exactly on the Nord homepage) does not exceed the other 512MB - or do the Libraries consume more physical memory when they get transferred and expanded to the instrument?


If I have the answers, I might pre-calculate which of the Libraries I can stuff into the Electro, and if I'm happy with it - before I make my decision.

Thanks,
Andreas

Your question - "How much Piano Memory is still vacant" - means nothing - what count is how much memory you have in total. You can (and will do) swap pianos after your taste. On Electro 6 you got 1 GByte - on Stage 3 you got 2 GByte. That is a big difference if you like to use many different piano sounds, but if you are playing with a load band and need to cut the mix, then I think many of the pianos won't work and the ones that does fits inside 1 GByte...

Do you need a synth is the real question!

1. I have no idea, but if you find a certain sound more to your liking than another one, the Sound Manager has an option for showing you which programs currently use a specific piano or sample, and a function for replacing and relinking pianos (and samples), so that, while they won’t sound the same, all existing programs will at least continue to work.

2. Pianos and samples use exactly as much memory on-machine as they do on the computer. There is no transcoding, decompression, or binhexing involved.

Do you need a synth is the real question

No, that's not what I was asking. I have just about every gear at hand, but only dull pianos. And I love brilliant pianos

That's why I need to calculate how many Libraries I can pack into 1GB.
After buying the instrument, I could answer it myself.

Thanks. Well, I'm not into changing sounds all the time. "Setup once, enjoy everywhere".

I know what I need for my favourite playing, and the question can be narrowed down to this example:
=> Does the [anchor= goto=http://www.nordkeyboards.com/sound-libr ... lvet-grand]Velvet Grand Model 1 XL 5.3.npno (190.3 MB)[/anchor] exactly take up 190.3 MB in the Nord Memory - or more?

And if I come to the conclusion that my favourite sounds don't fit into 1GB altogether, then it obviously has to be the Stage over the Electro, even if it was only for that 2GB feature.

There is no transcoding, decompression, or binhexing involved

Thank you, that should answer it. I was a bit late reading.

awi64 wrote:1. How much Piano Memory is still vacant (of the initial 1024MB) when the Electro 6D comes shipped with its Factory sounds

I see your second question was answered, but for the first, this is another one of those questions that seems to get asked here a bunch, in one way or another. Picking up from what NoDirection and analogika said, it doesn't matter whether the answer is 512, or zero, or anything else, because the space is entirely reusable, and anything you take out can always be put back in. You can just pick your favorite 1024 worth regardless of what's already there. Nord does not leave a whole lot of empty space, but it makes no difference.

An analogy would be if you went to grocery stores that handed you a small shopping cart when you walked in. Let's say everyone buys bread and milk. Store A gives you an empty cart, while store B gives you a cart with white bread and whole milk already in it. If you prefer wheat bread and lowfat milk, at store A, you'd just pick up those items, whereas at store B you'd take out the white bread and whole milk to make room for the versions you want. But in the end, it makes no difference... either way, you still leave the stores with wheat bread and lowfat milk if that's what you want.

So what would be the consequence if Nord left a lot of free space instead of using most of it? It wouldn't affect what pianos you could ultimately have loaded, but it would mean that there would be fewer different piano sounds someone could hear on the showroom floor, and it would mean that, when you got it home, you'd have less variety available to you until you spent the hours assembling your desired combination (which would probably take you longer because you wouldn't as easily be able to instantly audition as many of the sounds to begin with). So where's the benefit to having more empty space instead of having more pianos you can instantly play (but still remove)? That's why it makes sense that Nord fills most of the space instead of leaving more of it empty.

awi64 wrote:And if I come to the conclusion that my favourite sounds don't fit into 1GB altogether, then it obviously has to be the Stage over the Electro, even if it was only for that 2GB feature.

The problem is that you will not know what are your “favourite sounds” until you play them neither, you know now whether you will really need the XL versions or you will be happy with L or even M sizes so that you can use less space... I think that the amount of Piano memory should not be a primary parameter in driving the choice between the NE6 and NS3, considering the price gap between the two.