Nord Piano 4 - stage setup with

[rob aylestone]

Has anyone got one of these? We had a Jazz band in with one and the output was DI's in stereo into the PA and worked fine. We discovered a really strange 'feature'. The FOH mixer returned the signal to stage into a single monitor, with each channel at around half on the aux sends, and as the channels were linked, EXACTLY the same amount from L and R went back. Piano sounded normal, but the electric piano sound was completely cancelled! The same as if you flipped the polarity switch - complete cancellation. Cured by only sending the holdback from one of the two channels. In stereo no real impact at all, but it muted the monitor feed she was playing to. No idea if this is an anomaly of that particular sound, or some preset tweaking she'd done.

A strange 'feature' of a quite nice sounding keyboard.

[Ponder5]

Certainly you've gone through everything and your soundguy is qualified and your gear is all topnotch.
I'm not doubting your efforts.

But face it, this thing has been out for a year, sold many units, and this is the first time I (or perhaps anyone) has heard of this oddball error?
Including the factory?

In that same amount of time, pretty much every Thursday thru Sunday night, otherwise intelligent people have frantically pulled their hair out over a sound system that was setup EXACTLY right but wouldn't work right.

Maybe the Nord isn't to blame?
Just sayin'....

[Ponder5]

Sidebar:
This very afternoon, played at one of those small-town festival things.
Sound check was great. It all worked. Everything perfect. Digital mixer. Digital control surface. Monitor mixes on bluetooth tablets. Wireless ears. Very high-zoot.
Time for performance and I cannot hear a thing. THEN i could hear singer, guitarist, etc. but could not hear a note of my own keyboards! Not a note for the first three songs.
They could hear me. I couldn't hear them. Very frustrating. Coming out of the mains; going into their mixes; but not into my ears.
Afterwards, the Soundman, being a half-wit, said, "well, you're using a velocity sensitive keyboard, right? That's the problem. Volume all over the place."

It's hard to find good help.

[gecko zzed]

SAfterwards, the Soundman, being a half-wit, said, "well, you're using a velocity sensitive keyboard, right? That's the problem. Volume all over the place."

Soundman making up implausible story to deflect from him having forgotten to unmute the send (or whatever).

[rob aylestone]

In my case - piano, strings and organ sounds worked fine. That one electric piano patch just produced an output with one channel inverted. The 'fault' was revealed because on the M32 Midas, the gains and faders were linked so exactly the same gain and fader setting for both, plus identical sends to bus 3 from both of them. This caused the cancelation. a small change to gain, fader level or send level on just one channel of the pair produced sound. the link feature sat the Nord in exactly cancelled out status. I don't know if they have a feature to invert one of the channels in a particular patch, but it did. never had it before with a Nord, but one of those unlikely multiple cause conditions.

[Ponder5]

Soundman making up implausible story to deflect from him having forgotten to unmute the send (or whatever).

My thoughts exactly. Trouble is, not everyone in the band is as smart as you. We'll find out at practice, Wednesday night.

[Ponder5]

In my case - piano, strings and organ sounds worked fine. That one electric piano patch just produced an output with one channel inverted. The 'fault' was revealed because on the M32 Midas, the gains and faders were linked so exactly the same gain and fader setting for both, plus identical sends to bus 3 from both of them. This caused the cancelation. a small change to gain, fader level or send level on just one channel of the pair produced sound. the link feature sat the Nord in exactly cancelled out status. I don't know if they have a feature to invert one of the channels in a particular patch, but it did. never had it before with a Nord, but one of those unlikely multiple cause conditions.

I have to admit that's a remarkable condition.

In sample based keyboards, I've come across comb-filtering and cancellations when stacking samples, and even modules, because, after all, they're using the same waveform. Seems surprising this hasn't come up during practice.

Channel inversion is a pretty ordinary control on a mixer, but not so common on a keyboard. Still in all, the fact that it CAN happen, in something as mature as the N4 is somewhat astonishing. They usually tailor the samples to expand the stereo field and thus they're not-identical.

I mean, you're right. Linked is linked. Identical is identical. The only other possibility is that you were somehow hooked-up with 2 channels of the same side and one was inverted. I'm sure it wasn't, and I'm sure that was checked, and highly unlikely, but it woulda produced the same result... EXCEPT it woulda been on every patch. Just EP? Gotta admit, it ain't the mixer.

It would be interesting to see what Nord says about this. I mean, if you could do this on stage, you could easily do this at home and make a vid/mp3 and send it to them. Wait, I can almost predict this. They'll harumph a bit and then say that OH, yes, this was cured in our latest sound set. Then ask if you're using the LATEST sound set from their download page? You're not? WELL... we can see that must be your problem.

Might be the weirdest keyboard thing I've heard of in some time.

[rob aylestone]

We were doing the sound check and the keyboards were fine - we'd got levels and balance right then she suddenly said the electric piano didn't work, and pressing the third button produced silence. I had the memory in my head of some older Korg keyboards that had mild cancellation, so we tried removing one side and it burst back into life! probably ne ver have them back again, so repeating and testing not possible - however, I'll add this one to my list for the future.