Nord Wave 2 vs Nord Lead A1 & Nord Lead 4

[mkastrup]

I've had Nord Wave 2 for 2 days now and have started to compare the actual sound engine to Nord Lead A1.

My first observation is that Nord Wave 2 is not quite as warm in sound as the A1 and the reason for this is a waveform in A1 will have slightly more fundemental tone than in Nord Wave 2.

Example:

A Saw waveform in Nord Wave 2 will not sound as thick/warm/rounded as a Saw waveform in A1 because the fundemental Sine waveform in a A1 Saw waveform is a tad higher.
I've used no measuring instruments but just my ears. For refence waveform i mostly used wavetable 1 EPiano 1 which is identical to wavetable E1 in Nord Lead A1 and P1 in Nord Lead 4.

Nord Lead A1 and Nord Lead 4 both got that little extra in fundemental tone.

Is it a problem, nah probably not but if you struggle to create a patch from your A1 or NL4 on your Nord Wave 2 then maybe compensate with a little low end EQ.

The quick fix on Nord Wave 2 is to group all 4 layers use the EQ at around 222 Hz and a 4-6dB gain.

[DJKeys]

Interesting. I still had my A1 to use as a programming guide for my NW2 and had them both side by side for a few weeks. I never had an NL4. I did not notice any difference in the raw waveforms and found it really easy to program the same sounds on the NW2 as I had on my A1. The NW2 for me is probably the easiest to program synth I have ever owned.

-dj

[tsss27]

Interesting observations. I have not owned the 4 or A1, but will test this out when I get an NW2 again...if I can make it sound warmer/fatter I certainly won't pass that up for old school analog tones.

[mkastrup]

I tried to use Spectrum Analyzer on the waveforms and could not see any difference between the 2 synths, tiny difference only started to show when i tried to compare the filters, both LP24.
The middle position on the A1 FREQ is a tiny bit lower than middle position on the Wave 2, Wave 2 is roughly 200hz higher at middle position.

[smrfz]

I tried to use Spectrum Analyzer on the waveforms and could not see any difference between the 2 synths, tiny difference only started to show when i tried to compare the filters, both LP24.
The middle position on the A1 FREQ is a tiny bit lower than middle position on the Wave 2, Wave 2 is roughly 200hz higher at middle position.

Interesting that you can't see any differences. So this instead points to the phase of the Wave 2 saw being flipped (to shark fin). The NL1 has a regular sawtooth, after that, they flipped the wave phase and the effect of this is for there to be less audible bass, even when the spectra look identical. This is a psychoacoustic effect due to physical push-pull of speaker cones. In the DAW it makes no difference, but to your ears, it does. I have confirmed this with the NL1 vs Wave 1. The spectra on the two do not look the same (NL1 has more high frequency content) but in terms of bass the NL1 sounds slightly "bassier" until you flip the phase on the Wave 1 signal, then they sound equally bassy.

From the above observations it sounds like they flipped the wave back to normal on the A1/NL4.