Definately the red one. My KRK monitors are red and match the piano perfectly.

Yeah. One of the things that set them apart, as well as that lovely bit of wood as a whammy you get on some of their machines. Stylish..

Just got to remember to do the Red Tie and Black Shirt thang.

I'm getting a red business card. hehe...

Just a quick update. I know it's been a very long time, and I had planned on making a full video review of the nord. To be honest, I still plan on doing this, however there has been a small problem with the keyboard and me and one other person I talk with are experiencing the same issue, so I've been waiting for now to do the review, because I don't want to cast the board in a negative light if they can fix it (because it would be an honest review).

Clavia has been working on the issue and right now it may or may not be resolved. For those who are curious, essentially there is a condition in which certain variables in a performance, most specifically pedal timing, causes a note to drop or change it's sound slightly. It's hard to explain, and harder to cause when you WANT it to happen. However, it is there. It is along the lines of the metallic noises that can be heard on the rd700nx. If you know what I mean, basically most people might not hear it, but it's there. It is slight and doesn't always happen, however we're hoping they can figure out the issue and resolve it.

I can honestly say that I would buy it again nonetheless. I still believe it is the most realistic DP on the market in terms of sound. But I just wanted to give an update. I didn't forget the review! :-o sorry for the delay.

OS revision 1.44 was supposed to care of this issue. I've not heard a dropped note during pedaling since I've updated.

Unfortunately it did not for us. Me and another person I know are still having the issue after 1.44. They released 1.44 working on the issue with us. We were having them try some changes. They did make adjustments that lessened the effect a tad, I believe, or at least changed the effect somewhat. But thus far it hasn't been eliminated completely for us on our two nords anyway...

I heard it just for a second on Thursday night's gig. I was in the middle of a solo and can't remember for sure, but I don't think I was on the pedal. But there was a sharp, unpleasant, metallic noise that jumped up out of nowhere. I've used the NP on at least 9 gigs now and that was the first time I'd noticed it...

I've worked with some pretty good coders and the lower level ones generally used emulators to debug their stuff as it ran on the target.

The higher level coders would invariably write a big pile of code and just see how it ran. Testing was done via billions of diagnostic messages streaming out of the serial port.

With my HDL coding (VHDL, verilog) I have the luxury of thoroughly simulating at the module/component level, which lets me bang on my stuff and completely understand it, thus sidestepping most of the nasty/obscure bugs.

I'm kind of surprised to see so many software issues in DPs, and it seems to be getting worse. Does the modern software process seem out of control?

I've never heard this on the NP, nor have I heard of anyone else having it until now. I know the roland had an issue like that thought. Is it possible it was something with the setup? Not saying it wasn't the nord, just curious...

Are you saying that the RD-700NX has key/pedal issues that produce unexpected clangy notes out of the blue? If so, this is the first I've heard of it. The main "Concert Grand" voice can get springy and metallic if you push it too hard.

Nope. The issue on the 700 isn't pedal related, it simply has a metallic sound. I notice this without having to play hard at all, although it may make it more noticeable. It sounds unnatural and separate from the piano sample though, like a sound processing issue...

Yeah I agree. The Roland SuperNATURAL pianos have an inherent metallicness to them. It was one of the things that bothered me when playing fortissimo on the RD-700GXF I had and RD-700NX briefly. I have never experienced note dropping once on the NP88. Never had any issues even when heavily pedaling.

This is the issue we are having with the troubleshooting situation. Clavia doesn't hear either until we send them midi performances that we capture of our playing. What we have found is that it isn't related to how much you pedal or how long you pedal, but exactly when the pedal information lines up with the note information.

For instance, you could play normally for hours, and if the pedal press and release is 200ms before a note being played everything is normal. However, if you play the pedal 100ms before the note it causes the issue. I'm completely making up these numbers, but it is the timing of the pedal in relation to the corresponding notes being played.

Clavia believes that some people don't hear it, including them, because of the different ways people time their sustains. It isn't that one person is playing wrong and another right, but that there are simply different timings of the pedal. Unfortunately, on a real piano this wouldn't matter, but on the nord it causes some sort of glitch.

To the best of clavia's knowledge, their guess is that the string resonance is cutting out instantly causing the perceived "drop" in sound. While this normally wouldn't happen it has something to do with the way the pedal timing affects the resonance.

Another difficulty is that even though it is definitely noticeable listening as well as playing, it is more obvious when you are playing, because you are expecting a certain sound from the notes you play, so when the "drop" occurs it is very distracting.

This has caused me and the other person I know is having the issue to spend a lot of time editing the sustain pedal data in our songs to eliminate the issue. A slight shift (so slight it wouldn't even change the notes being sustained) eliminates the issue. But that means going in and adjusting every note sustain data that has the issue. And to make the problem worse, if you play back that few seconds of audio the problem might not occur, you need to start the song a while previous to the issue and let it play through to test the change, because there may be string resonance or something else accumulating that changes the variables that cause the issue. Although, it isn't a polyphony problem with resonance or notes, because I've heard it happen just starting a song with only a few notes and on songs where there are enough pedal presses that polyphony wouldn't be an issue.

That is how far we have got. Clavia has released a few OS updates between the ones on their site, but each change either doesn't help or only slightly changes the way the glitch sounds. I believe they are currently trying to have a developer look into the issue. From our conversations with clavia, I believe that they agree the issue exists, but they're not sure if it can be fixed without altering the sound of the string resonance, which is sort of the hallmark feature of the nord piano. So only time will tell, but I'm hoping a developer can find a fix...

Funny, but my "real" Baldwin grand also has a metallic glitch sometimes if I hit a note fff and don't have the pedal quite in place.
Maybe this is another of Clavia's "realism imperfections" !

Luisdent, could you provide us with an MP3 of this bug happening?

the metallic glitch is the roland, not the clavia. the clavia has a weird dropped sound glitch. and the metallic noise from my experience on the roland is not just on loud notes, but loud notes might exaggerate the effect.

I have edited all my performances to remove the glitch, but I will try to keep a copy of my next recording, before edits, to capture an mp3 of this clearly.

Just wanted to let yo guys know I recorded a remix track using the nord piano. I used the new bright grand piano setting. I think this bright grand is awesome for rock music. Check it out.

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/a5755270758077a3d42fa970f87946ea/483

If you guys like it I could use some votes too! And feel free to pass it around hehe