Nord User Forum

Gambold wrote:Nord acoustic pianos are still the best by a country mile.

Well I also think that even the big keyboards manufacturers will slow down a bit with releasing new products and this affects Nord, too. The Apple silicon chips opened a new world in the music industry. The latency can be so low than never before and many plugins are running natively on M1 by now.
I got an M1 Macbook and I am just amazed how the latency can be ridicuolosly low. The plugin manufacturers also focus on M1 native compatibility as I see.
For live use NI, Arturia, Spectrasonics can easily replace any Nord hardware and offer better quality IMO.
Of course a Laptop + sound card + midi controller combo can be "risky" I admit but still a cheaper solution than a 4000-5000$ Nord hardware which has serious memory limitations.

Korg also focuses to release plugin versions of their instruments because it is definitely more beneficial to spend money developing on than making new hardware with crazy inflation rates and global supply issues.

I am not saying there won't be new hardware releases but companies will consider spending more money on the software side of things.

my experience is just opposite to you @Mrniceguy76. Used MainStage and USB card on stage a couple of years, but decided to move to hardware... Was always a little scared to play outside and on stage not always stable with this setup. A couple of time the USB connection failed.

For me, it's not really a matter of stability: both Mac OS and iPad OS never failed me on a gig, both MainStage and standalone AUs work extremely well. Rather, it's a matter of useability. Pulling drawbars with a touchpad or a touchscreen is extremely akward and physical faders usually won't work via bluetooth:; the same goes for any other VST/AU: swapping sounds is often far from smooth and not nearly as easy as on a Nord, also you're very limited for what concerns splits; soft synths in particular are impossible to reliably and rapidly program on the fly, even with a touch interface; finally, there are currently no master keyboards featuring a waterfall keybed on the market, so you can't rely on a software setup if Hammond is your primary instrument (unless you buy something like a used Electro 3, but it's not really worth it since they aren't that cheap either).

It's basically just too akward a setup and limits what I could/need to do in real time (I had to give up on some sounds and splits). That's why I don't think software setups will replace hardware keyboards anytime soon: they will complement them at most (obviously this doesn't apply to people who, say, only play piano and just need a great Rhodes VST such as Keyscape's). On the opposite, I wouldn't be surprised if some great software instruments makers such as Arturia were to release hardware keyboards running their synths (they actually did release something like that in the past but utterly failed because it was cumbersome and expensive), just like Crumar did with their VB3, which started out as a software-only clonewheel.

Mrniceguy76 wrote:Well I also think that even the big keyboards manufacturers will slow down a bit with releasing new products and this affects Nord, too. The Apple silicon chips opened a new world in the music industry. The latency can be so low than never before and many plugins are running natively on M1 by now.
I got an M1 Macbook and I am just amazed how the latency can be ridicuolosly low. The plugin manufacturers also focus on M1 native compatibility as I see.
For live use NI, Arturia, Spectrasonics can easily replace any Nord hardware and offer better quality IMO.
Of course a Laptop + sound card + midi controller combo can be "risky" I admit but still a cheaper solution than a 4000-5000$ Nord hardware which has serious memory limitations.

I use the Stage whenever I can get away with it *because* of its simplicity.

A self-contained keyboard, with power cord and stereo 1/4", controller and sustain pedals (I can get through a gig with either breaking down)

vs.

a controller keyboard, power supply, usb cable, computer, plugins, MainStage, *another* USB cable, interface, *another* power supply, and then the stereo 1/4". And controller and sustain pedals.

SO MUCH complexity, so many points of failure.

I use MainStage exclusively for one of my main regular gigs, but I'm constantly nervous and wary, as I've had lots of weird issues with notes sometimes not sustaining when switching patches (unless I've cycled through all patches of a concert beforehand), polyphony apparently reduced — not to mention actual overheating of the machine with the accompanying hard throttling and stuttering/cut-outs caused by the reduced CPU power.

I've also had an issue where the machine had lost the connection to the interface since sound check and, when I restarted to see if it would resolve the issue, hung on reboot. Forced restart several times, tried booting into safe mode — nothing.

After fifteen minutes of troubleshooting (and delaying the show by several minutes) I eventually just left it alone and informed the band that the show would have to commence without my live keyboards, and we started the performance.

The computer FINALLY booted properly just before the end of the first song; I logged in and launched MainStage, and everything ran normally for the rest of the show.

I really don't need that kind of stress if I can avoid it.

I've had two failed individual keys in 17 years of using Nords, and that's it.

All is true, but I need a librarian / performance editor. Have hundred of patches, need to load/unload before my gigs with different bands. Some are complex, depending if Sax player will show up or not, or singer A or B, etc. etc.

The tool exist thanks to an independent developer for Yamaha keyboards and it is great: I can create my setlists in minutes, literally. I can save thousands of patches and, pre-load them in the board, listen, tweak them, and then save it (to the keyboard, to the editor, or both). Also very easy to set up on/off zones, layers, splits. The create multiple setlists: my soul & blues band, my disco band, with brass, without brass, with double keyboard, without double keyboard...

http://www.jmelas.gr/stage/yc-lib1-mac.png

http://www.jmelas.gr/stage/yc-lib.php

Or for Montage:

https://scontent.ffjr1-6.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=62A8E1D2

Agree, John’s tools are great and I used them a lot when I was still using my Motif XF and MOXF boards. I am still using his waveform editor sometimes to get wav files from Motif programs and then convert them into Nord samples with Nord’s sample editor. I get around quite well though with Nord’s sound manager now too for organizing my sound banks on my Stage 3s so I don’t miss much for my Nords

Schorsch wrote:Agree, the tools from John are great and I used them a lot when I was still using my Motif XF and MOXF boards but I get around quite well with Nord’s sound manager now.

Thanks, but how do you manage large collection of patches? more than 400 for instance?

neomad wrote:

Schorsch wrote:Agree, the tools from John are great and I used them a lot when I was still using my Motif XF and MOXF boards but I get around quite well with Nord’s sound manager now.

Thanks, but how do you manage large collection of patches? more than 400 for instance?

I don’t have to manage such a large number of patches so that’s not a problem for me fortunately

analogika wrote:

Mrniceguy76 wrote:Well I also think that even the big keyboards manufacturers will slow down a bit with releasing new products and this affects Nord, too. The Apple silicon chips opened a new world in the music industry. The latency can be so low than never before and many plugins are running natively on M1 by now.
I got an M1 Macbook and I am just amazed how the latency can be ridicuolosly low. The plugin manufacturers also focus on M1 native compatibility as I see.
For live use NI, Arturia, Spectrasonics can easily replace any Nord hardware and offer better quality IMO.
Of course a Laptop + sound card + midi controller combo can be "risky" I admit but still a cheaper solution than a 4000-5000$ Nord hardware which has serious memory limitations.

I use the Stage whenever I can get away with it *because* of its simplicity.

A self-contained keyboard, with power cord and stereo 1/4", controller and sustain pedals (I can get through a gig with either breaking down)

vs.

a controller keyboard, power supply, usb cable, computer, plugins, MainStage, *another* USB cable, interface, *another* power supply, and then the stereo 1/4". And controller and sustain pedals.

SO MUCH complexity, so many points of failure.

I use MainStage exclusively for one of my main regular gigs, but I'm constantly nervous and wary, as I've had lots of weird issues with notes sometimes not sustaining when switching patches (unless I've cycled through all patches of a concert beforehand), polyphony apparently reduced — not to mention actual overheating of the machine with the accompanying hard throttling and stuttering/cut-outs caused by the reduced CPU power.

I've also had an issue where the machine had lost the connection to the interface since sound check and, when I restarted to see if it would resolve the issue, hung on reboot. Forced restart several times, tried booting into safe mode — nothing.

After fifteen minutes of troubleshooting (and delaying the show by several minutes) I eventually just left it alone and informed the band that the show would have to commence without my live keyboards, and we started the performance.

The computer FINALLY booted properly just before the end of the first song; I logged in and launched MainStage, and everything ran normally for the rest of the show.

I really don't need that kind of stress if I can avoid it.

I've had two failed individual keys in 17 years of using Nords, and that's it.

Agree! After about a year or two using midi controller and moving into the NS3, I finally have the peace of mind to just play without worrying what might fail when playing with my midi controller. Well worth!