it took me about more than 18 months until I got some decent sounds
of my nord rack 2. Right at this time I had already sold the damn thing on ebay but I hadn't sent it away yet. What an irony


When I bought it, I felt a great disappointment. I bought for the creation of uplifiting trance sounds, fat pads and phat chrystal clear
lead sounds --> I should have tested more before buying.
It took me a very long time until I could make that sounds with the nord lead...lots of tweaking and eqing.

The only thing I liked was that agressive sound if you played with the
LFOs and Unisono, and also making some acid sounds using an external distortion device. For Psy it might be good somehow, but I felt very disappointed since I had bought it for uplifting trance.

I bought a Virus Powercore then. At first I missed the harsh heights of the Nord Rack 2 (thought it sounded more analog). But I never regretted selling the nord rack.

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mindsoundscapes.com

emc^2, I really disagree with you. Nord Lead 2 has a great sound and NL3 has a great sound plus creative design. Nord Lead is suitable for any kind of music, including uplifting trance. In fact, Chicane has two NL2 synths and his sound is very uplifting! A lot of trance producers uses NL2. And NL3 is suitable to get similar sounds to JP80x0's supersaw, much more than Supernova 2 and Virus could get (I have both, I know that!). I use NL3 samples loaded on my EXS24/Logic all the time, because I love the NL3 sound (unfortunately, I cannot buy a NL3 now...)
If Gabriel & Dresden (Motorcycle) could get trance sounds only from ES1 (Logic), do you think it's impossible to get the similar sounds from Clavia NL? Ah, nowadays I know it's possible make any kind of music using any piece of hadrware or software. So, please...

The nl3 makes some amazing violin sounds and plucked sounds but overall i dont like the sound of the filters or the osc...

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"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes"

i like the 4 pole filter on the nord lead 2x. i didnt like the 2 pole filter though because using resonance on it makes the sound awfully awfully thin and quiet.

but the oscillators rock. although im a virus b user so its pretty much the opposite way around. alot of the bright sounds that require meticulous saturation and FM syncing/ring modulation on the virus are straight up and no fu/cking around on the nord lead.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative i like the 4 pole filter on the nord lead 2x. i didnt like the 2 pole filter though because using resonance on it makes the sound awfully awfully thin and quiet. but the oscillators rock. although im a virus b user so its pretty much the opposite way around. alot of the bright sounds that require meticulous saturation and FM syncing/ring modulation on the virus are straight up and no fu/cking around on the nord lead.

Yeah i really wish they would rewrite the virus osc and give it some sort of model of a discrete osc(moog modular, jp8 etc) those osc's are really powerfull that + the good filters on the virus =

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"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes"

quote:

Originally posted by emc^2 I had all models: Nord Rack (NL1) Nord 2 Keys Nord 2x Keys Nord 3 Keys Nord 3 Rack The only one that induced some kind of emotion out of me was Nord 2x - it had few pretty cool and agressive leads, some phat pads and saws. The rest, might as well have not existed.

Christ man, where did you get the cash to get all these synths? And if you say it had a few good leads and pads it sounds like you used presets only:O

If you had the cash to buy 5 synths your best bet would probably have been to use a Nord 3 in combination with a Virus TI. And trying to program them yourself from an init before judging it.

kind regards,

Charlie D

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Review Latest Track; Charlie Delta - Then The Days Where Long

Music is as universal to people as breathing. We've probably been at it since before we even started talking. Immaging two cavemen smashing away at a peace of flint to make a spearhead. It wouldn't take long for them to learn te synchronise the sound. And there you have it, the words first percussive band.

Music has survived wars, famines, the plague and many other things and has evolved with man across many cultures. Dance music is just the next step in the evolutionary chain. My guess is that it will probably be with us untill we are extinced.

Back in the day when i bought my Virus A i had to choose between it and the Nord Lead 2.
As said before the pure wave forms of the Nord Lead are more clear than the virus but i still went for the Virus because the Nord Lead lacks any kind of onboard FX , no Delay even. Since i already owned a JP8080 i went for the virus.

If NL's had FX onboard i think i would have gone for it.

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quote:

Originally posted by groundzero74 As said before the pure wave forms of the Nord Lead are more clear than the virus If NL's had FX onboard i think i would have gone for it.

Yes that is what I like about the Nords. INdeed, the oscillator are more round and the waveforms are more pronounced and it sounds more defined than the virus. It gives it a very upfront sound to it.., which is good sometimes, but not all the time. To me, it's that in particular that set it apart from other VAs, and worth getting, especially for what an used Nord 2 runs for nowadays 400-500. I wouldn't worry to much about the onboard FX if you own a virus. Virus FX are probably the best onboard FX i've heard on a VA, and you could easily use the virus as an external fx box (thats how good they sound IMO). Or as an alternative, since you can pick up an used nord, you can always buy a decent external reverb fx module for about 200 (m-one from T.C. electronic), or go an extra notch up to a lexicon mpx1 (300-350). I don't believe in using to cheap of an fx module (e.g. lexicon mpx-110) as it would defeat the purpose of running a good sound source (nord) to cheap fx box. And of course, lastly or first, you can always use plugins for the FX, but of course you can only apply the effects to wave files, given that your recording things to wave.

I personally don't like the sound of the Nord 3 to much. Sounds kinda digital and reminds me a little bit of the waldorf sound.

quote:

If NL's had FX onboard i think i would have gone for it.

i actually think the nord is better for having no effects on it. the only effect on it is the distortion unit and although its more limited than the virus distortion, in my opinion it sounds 10 times more pleasant and its more usable.

the delay on the virus isnt really that hot. only a 0.5ms delay time and its not global and cannot be used with reverb. id rather use fruity delay/delay 2 to be honest :\

the virus reverb im sorry to say is quite simply OWNED by SIR 1.008 + lexicon PCM91 hall responses. and the latter is all free.

the chorus is ok though - i use that one regularly and it does sound better than fruity chorus and is really good at adding just that little extra grit to a massive pad type patch.

the phaser is pretty awesome if you keep the stages low and use it subtly (its great for adding a little extra movement to a sound, especially, if you mix it in at low level and set it as a destination for random oscillation or use one of the wavetables as a source)

distortion i dont really know what to think of. i dislike the sound of all of them except for rectification which behaves entirely differently to all the other distortion types on the virus, and probably only because i dont have a software rectifier.

for tube saturation i would rather use the freeware greastetube. for digital distortion i would rather use the freeware SC_Overdrive. for high/band/low pass analogue distortion i would rather use the freeware plugin - tridirt.

quote:

If you had the cash to buy 5 synths your best bet would probably have been to use a Nord 3 in combination with a Virus TI. And trying to program them yourself from an init before judging it.

in my humble opinion nobody needs more than 1 virtual analogue synth.

for the price of those 2 - thats about 2.5 to 3 grand you could get a real analogue polysynth (like a roland juno-60 for £400 used) a classic analogue mono synth (sequential pro-one for £450 used), a digital wavetable monster (waldorf microwave xt rack for about £300 used), an awesome virtual analogue workhorse synth (virus b or nl 2x rack for about £350 used), a decent midi keyboard and NI Kontakt to meet all your sampling needs on your PC.

obviously it would be a REALLY bad idea to buy all that in one go though since it would be as confusing as hell. but with that 2.5 grand i would easily stick 2.1 of it in a high interest savings account. buy one of those awesome synths. spend a year using it and getting familiar with it, then taking out another 400 or so to buy another one once you have mastered the instrument you already have.

and you will undoubtedly have chump change left afterwards in interest to buy ice cream.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative the virus reverb im sorry to say is quite simply OWNED by SIR 1.008 + lexicon PCM91 hall responses. and the latter is all free.

Interesting... didnt know there were lexicon impulses available. I'm checking out now.

do you have the Nordish By Nature Nordlead 3 Soundset?



If so, can I PM you?

That's nice as hell.

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quote:

Originally posted by bachatu Interesting... didnt know there were lexicon impulses available. I'm checking out now.

you can get them from www.noisevault.com.

theres a tonne of PCM91 reverbs including the plates. they are sampled from the actual unit and whoever did it, did a very good job.

as long as you can put up with the 8960 sample delay that comes with SIR (or you have latency compensation in your host), then that is pretty much the best reverb you will ever get for free.

and it beats the living shit out of most DSP reverb effects.