New Stage 3 owner makes a confession

[jmm55]

I'm a luthier and a guitar player. Been playing for 38 years, mostly rock. I have a friend who owns a big music store, and we worked out a deal that had me acquire a Nord Stage 3. Now I've never owned a piano, and I've probably spent a total of three hours in my life behind any kind of keyboard (had to google how many black keys there are in g major to answer the Norduserforum security question [first guess of five was apparently wrong]) but I always thought I might get along with a piano if I ever had the opportunity to really play one.

I connected the Stage 3 last night and put a few hours on it yesterday and today. Rocked my musical world, and I'll never be the same. What a machine. Spectacular engineering.

In any event, right now I have ch 1 and 2 going into a Roland CM-220 monitor system. I managed to get channel's 3 and 4 to feed into my Tascam 16X08 (so I can record the Stage 3), but I have to say I could make no sense of the manual on this. I went into the system settings and randomly changed output settings until I had output in all four channels.

Here's my question. I like to listen to the Nord through the Roland monitor with a fair amount of reverb, but it's much too wet when recorded. I want to record dry (no reverb) through channels 3 and 4, and add reverb later. Can this be done? And If so, how do I do it?

[maxpiano]

Hi and welcome to NUF jmm55

What you are asking cannot be done using output 3/4, because when a section is assigned to those outputs it is removed from 1/2; the way to obtain what you need would be to have no reverb active on NS3 and add it as an external FX before the monitors.

But I think that it would not be optimal to record withouth reverb whaile you play with reverb, because what you hear affects your playing so wouldn't it be easier to just not exhagerate with reverb and record "what you hear", connecting NS3->Tascam->Monitors?

[Hlaalu]

Hum?

As far as I recall, reverb is only active on outputs selected as "main". So if you select 1 and 2 as main, and 3-4 as "sub", then you'll have reverb on 1-2 only, but the output is going to be on all four of them. Grant you you can only assign one sound engine at a time on the "sub" though.

[analogika]

As Hlaalu writes, this is possible.

BUT: you cannot add the Nord’s internal reverb after the fact. So you’d need to use reverb within whatever program you’re using to record.

Another option would be to record MIDI only at first. That way, you could play with reverb as you like, and then you can edit the sound on the Nord to fit the mix to your liking when listening back, before recording the audio.

[maxpiano]

Hum?

As far as I recall, reverb is only active on outputs selected as "main". So if you select 1 and 2 as main, and 3-4 as "sub", then you'll have reverb on 1-2 only, but the output is going to be on all four of them. Grant you you can only assign one sound engine at a time on the "sub" though.

But NS3 manual says about SUB that you can only route 1 section to SUB per Panel, not all, so that would not work in general, only if your Program is limited to 1 Section per Panel (if I read it well)

[Hlaalu]

BUT: you cannot add the Nord’s internal reverb after the fact. So you’d need to use reverb within whatever program you’re using to record.

Well I thought that was what the OP was aiming for! Reverb on 1-2 and no reverb at all on 3-4.

Nevertheless:

But NS3 manual says about SUB that you can only route 1 section to SUB per Panel, not all, so that would not work in general, only if your Program is limited to 1 Section per Panel (if I read it well)

Yes as I said you'd only have one engine available - at least for recording, you could have more for just playing while only, say, a reverb-less piano is being recorded. I guess it depends on which kind of program exactly the OP is working on. But yes you'd have limitations anyway.

[analogika]

BUT: you cannot add the Nord’s internal reverb after the fact. So you’d need to use reverb within whatever program you’re using to record.

Well I thought that was what the OP was aiming for! Reverb on 1-2 and no reverb at all on 3-4.

Hey I didn't say that, analogika did

[Hlaalu]

misquotation... fixed

[analogika]

BUT: you cannot add the Nord’s internal reverb after the fact. So you’d need to use reverb within whatever program you’re using to record.

Well I thought that was what the OP was aiming for! Reverb on 1-2 and no reverb at all on 3-4.

He didn't specify that he'd be using reverb in the DAW.

Not knowing the OP's level of expertise, I felt it necessary to clarify that it's not possible to run anything through the Nord's internal reverb after you've recorded it.

If you like the Nord's internal reverb, you're going to have to record it the way you want it to sound later in the mix.

(Hence, my suggestion of using MIDI instead.)

[jmm55]

Thanks for all the replies. Yes, I want to add my own reverb later. I have Convology XT reverb plug in, and really like it, so Nord reverb would only serve a function for monitoring when playing and recording.

Admittedly I was a bit confused by the replies, but it sounds like it can be done, and that's good news. I'll read the manual again and do some button pushing and see if I can pull it off.