Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards What would you guys love to see in a Nord Piano 5?

What improvements would you guys love to see in a Nord Piano 5? I would be curious to read your thoughts about a successor for the Nord Piano 4. :-) And do you expect the successor to the Piano 4 this year or in 2022?

Integrate Pianoteq? lol.. j/k... We don't want another thread hijacked by Pianoteq or N1X action discussions .

Osho

Action, action, action. The Fatar TP40H was standard on Nord Piano 3 and Nord Piano 4. It's okay but not really competitive now.

50GB of samples. At least.

A better action would be really, really great, also aftertouch for the action for the synth sounds, more GigaBytes, the connector for the headphones on the front side and a nicer stand given the price they want for it (like the Korg ST-WL, this one looks really great)

This. Absolutely. Difficult to achieve but it would make a big difference.
The action is the only serious let-down of this (mostly) brilliant stage piano.

Minor things I'd love to see: Options to adjust touch curves (to adapt an action even better to the sounds), options for micro-tuning the keys.

1. Action
2. Piano samples that are tens of gigabytes - comparable to the best virtual pianos: with no looped samples, 10 or more velocity layers, una-corda
3. Piano samples that include multi-mic perspectives, hence real reverberation from the studio or the concert hall. I think that’s a bit of an understated feature of virtual pianos but IMO it’s a real game changer and what makes Garritan CFX, VSL and the others so popular. Dry samples with algorithmic reverb on top is not good anymore.
4. Playability that has been designed carefully for pianists. Current Nord instruments sound good on recordings but playing them is underwhelming due to weird touch/dynamics response.

As some of you will know Clavia's instruments use a different type of memory hardware than computers. Given this architecture the wish for tens of gigabytes of memory is not realistic. They would have to change the entire architecture.

Playability - CyberGene's no. 4 - is key. The instruments need to sound well (and they do!), they need to keep Clavia's basic concept (and its Piano Library!), and they should be even more playable from a pianist's perspective... In actual use I have no need for tons of gigabytes. I also view - and like - the Nord first and foremost as a performer's instrument (and not as a recording instrument).

+1

+2

How do you know the architecture, has it been published?

I have only found the Nord Electro 2 service manual. Yes, I know : it is quite old.

It uses a Flash RAM chip : https://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datasheet/227/28F640J3A-pdf.php

It is not a whole SSD drive with its SATA bus. Now I guess, we could have other specific busses (the Montage uses 2 ONFI busses), but we don’t have anywhere a PC architecture with its SATA bus and its ecosystem. Korg uses a PC architecture but needs a loading time for all attack samples which need to be in RAM.

Maybe another partnership with Kawai, as we saw in the Nord Grand?

This would make it the same as the Nord Grand but only in a flat format (which is much nicer IMHO). The only action from Kawai that would be a candidate for the Nord Piano 5 is the RH3 which is the same as the one in the Nord Grand. If Kawai doesn't come out this or next year with a RHIV for the MP7SE successor then there is no other action from Kawai that could be put into the next Nord Piano.

This would be all truly awesome but then Nord would have two products on the market which are so close to each other that it is unlikley that this will happen.

On the other hand, Nord has to come out with a product which provides a significant step up as most people who wanted a Nord Piano 4 or a Nord Grand have already bought their one. So as every company Clavia needs to generate periodically new revenue for themselves with new products.

A choice of colours!

"You can get it in any colour as long as its red"

lower price ?

I was thinking of another colour (green, or else...) before watching you post

Cheaper is also a great idea, there are other brands which are more bang for the buck...

Anyway, a good action is crucial : it's a shame to build a "Piano" with a so-so keybed. Fatar = meh

And why did Nord delete the let-off on the Nord Grand's Kaway keybed ? Total nonsense, as without this feature it's more difficult to control the low dynamics playing...

I wonder why Fatar with so much experience in building keybeds isn’t able to produce a truly great piano keybed.
I have opened my Kawai slap many times in the past and it does not look like rocket science at all....and the used materials are not more expensive than the Fatar wooden key actions either.

I am really puzzled by this.

Maybe it's an Apple v. Android type thing. Yamaha/Kawai/Roland have full vertical integration, so their actions are designed from the start to be mated to a chassis and controller superficially designed to house and work with the action.

Fatar, as an OEM supplier, has design to more generic housing/components/specs, so while the basic hinge/lever is similar, they can't play with the tolerances/specs quite as much, or are forced to deal with other constraints associated with being a generic part?