It looks like there will a new Nord Lead 4 introduced at Musikmesse 2013.
Nord’s only official announcement is a image teasing a new synth, right.
But there’s a new teaser web site for the Nord Lead 4, which offers little more than evolving drone sound.
Got ideas on what the new Nord Lead 4 specifications might be? Let the speculation begin!
via reader Edward, who notes that the new domain was registerd by Clavia.
The NL2x was a fantastic sounding machine. My only complaint was the lack of built in delay.
You can create delay/echo with the lfo section,read the manual 🙂
But then you lose that LFO for other purposes.
I’m excited by this! I had an original Nord Rack and I loved it, such a flexible, great-sounding VA. The morphing was such a great function.
I was in the market for NL2X so this is very exciting news indeed!!!
The hope with this demo is that there will be effects: delay, distortion, and reverb. Reverb being the least important. The demo seems to be a lot dirtier than typical nord lead sounds. The distortion on the old nord leads was subtle and underwhelming, this seems to be more gnarly. I’d personally like to see them have more flexible LFO’s and more envelopes, but that is not generally what Nord does, which is probably why I’m going to throw down for a Prophet 12.
Great! I hope this brings the price of a NL3 back down to something reasonable…
Was actually hoping for a N Modular 3.. but hey ho
Apparently Nord decided to take a page out of Arturia’s playbook: the Nord Lead 4 is an analog 8 voice polysynth. While “having a warm, retro sound” the Nord Lead 4 is also “equally adept at hard edge, aggressive synth sounds.” Aside from the surprise of Nord creating a true analog polysynth, the Nord 4 has an unusual synthesis architecture that differentiates it from other polysynths – notably the DSI Prophet 12 – and I’m not talking just the price but that will have to wait for the Musikmesse announcement.
An analog poly? Is it april 1st already?
Anyone else hope it retains the sample-playback capabilities of the now-discontinued Nord Wave? (but hopefully with more memory)
I always considered Wave as Lead heir, so I expect sample facilities from this too.
I was hoping for Modular…perhaps they could have combined their synth legacies into one Package as they might not have resources to run many synth teams at the same time. A powerful sounding and versatile Wave Lead with playable interface for those who might be intimitaded by creating their own synthesizers, and still fully patchable tool shed with robust DSP power for making it the horn of plenty for adventurers.
It would be shame to see them wasting the stunningly hard work they put into their modular DSP code. Not holding my breath of corse, just wanting Nord Modular so bad.
A 2X with Waves and some usual modular fonctions would be the pinnacle of their technology..
I’m hoping the new NL4 has built-in effects, more filter types, at least one more envelope and LFO, and a better way to do virus-like hyper-saw stuff. Also a larger display with better patch naming and categorization.
april fool’s?
I hope I can download the patches from the Nord library.
Their pinnacle of research was the Nord Lead 3. I never saw anything performing better. Among the non modular it is the most flexible Hardware VA around. The FM section is a blast of sound.
I don’t think they will come any near to that. If someone misses FX than add a cheap TC to it.
It’s the same old game with the NL4. Make money with a black case and cheap technology.
I have 16 micro modulars set up at present – possibly the most flexible ghetto VA modular ever ? running into 32 channel board – still running OS9 for the editor – kicks big ass – new expensive shit – ill wait… just because another one arrives – it does not silence old tech.
Considering how little change each NL/WAVE generation have got through the years, I would not expect a revolution here.
Live players are Clavia’s target customers. So I do not expect any upgrade on Multitimbrality or polyphony.
What I think they will add, is an enhanced Oscillator section, Effects section, Arpeggiator section and at the same time, keep the good functionality and quality Clavia are known for (morph, pitch stick, build quality etc).
But if they will add something new to the Nord Lead Family, I would hope it would be a Total integration system, similar to Access Virus TI Series, and at the same time add more Multitimbrality and polyphony.
I believe this is possible since DSP processing power have gotten better, and that Clavia seems to evolve slowly into the software world over last few years. And this will also attract more customers that would like to make a new addition to their studios.
It would be a big surprise if they added Nord Modular functionality.
It would definitely get my attention.
The thing that is hard to guess, is the pots on the front panel. Will they use LEDs around the pots/knobs?
They still use them on Nord Stage, and they were very popular on NL3. And after all the complaints when the Wave came out, I hope they will give in.
It would indeed be awesome if it would be a modular. But this is going to be unlikely. It would be a big risk for clavia to go down that road again. In the past the modular G2 didnt sell well. I think one of the reasons for this was that it was difficult to market. The G2 is so complex and endless in possibilities that this was actually its biggest weakpoint for people trying to sell them in stores. The G2 was too complex! Its heaven for synthesis, but you have to know how to use it and actually know stuff about synthesis to truly appreciate the modular. It was one of their most powerful synths.
I think the problem with the Nord Modulars is that it is very hard to motivate buying one compared to a softsynth, as the actual machine itself does not have much of a personality. In contrast, the Nord Leads (and the other instruments in the Nord series like the Stage and Electro) are real instruments, with character fixed set (= learnable and understandable) of parameters. With the Nord Modulars you’re basically using a PC to edit the sounds on and with the processing power of PC’s these days it makes little sense to have an external box (i.e. the synthesizer) actually make the sound, as most people are going to be using it in a studio anyway.
Anyway, the Nord Lead 4 looks interesting, especially for those considering getting a 2X. For me, it doesn’t really seem to offer any major advantages to the Nord Lead 2 I have, at least not enough to warrant upgrading. It’s a little bit extra of everything, but it’s still the same basic 2 osc / 2 eg / 2 lfo / multimode filter acrhitecture as before. Even the keyboard tracking (in 1/3 steps) is still the same as in the 2X. The delay module is the only real addition, which on the other hand I’d find very useful.
So I think it will do well for Clavia, perhaps drawing quite a few away from the 2X, but I don’t think existing Nord Lead owners will jump at it. I’d be quite interested to hear the difference between the standard and ladder 24dB LPF’s though.
Things that would make me go for it would be if they introduced aftertouch and a 5 octave keyboard. With all those control possibilities and voices, you really want a keyboard that’s more expressive than a non-weighted four octave only one with no aftertouch.
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