Just a small comment on the sounds and filters, because other reviews will tell you all the general stuff.

Someone commented that the filters tend to tune down a sound in the lower registers, and the resonance is a bit dry and digital. I felt the same way the first few weeks; I'm a filter snob and I was making a lot of comparisons between the Nord and the filters from my old Oberheim Matrix 6, Pulse, and Access Virus (another great DSP synth).

The Nord filters are certainly very 'pure' - when you turn a lowpass filter way down you do get very deep tones but not as much snarl as you might expect. Similarly plain filter resonance is quite 'glassy'. However! The way it works is that you can combine/tweak the filters and other modules to get what you want. If the the filters were less pure, then combining 2 or more of them would begin to degrade the sound with unwanted noise. Now that I'm more familiar with them, I can always get the sound I want...pulsing subs, dripping wet resonance, frequency-dependent drive and so on.

I suggest playing a lot with the formant filter, which to me sounds more 'retro' than the classic 24db filter if you don't sweep the formants. Chaining 24db and 12db filters (as on the Virus) is also a quick way to get more expression. And I have a lot of good things to say about the overdrive module, especially for acid-type sounds. Keep patching, the tones you're looking for are in there!

Pros: A. It is a synthesizer that lets you design any other synthesizer type you can imagine and then assign 18 knobs to edit it to your hearts content. (I said build any other synthesizer type, not any other synthesizer. Don't try to rebuild something that they don't make anymore cause they probably don't make it for a reason.) B. It can sound rich and thick as a Mint fudge chocolate truffle desert or metallic and cold as the tracks of the trans europe express in winter, thin as the model after a two week heroin binge, and all this without breaking a sweat. Does it sound like my old Super Fangled Verbulator? Who cares, I sold that old thing years ago cause it wasn't reliable and I wanted new sounds anyway.

Cons: A. It does not have the dual processor sound effects that we have come to expect from our years with romplers. (by the way, you don't love the sound of a minimoog. You love the current sound of a minimoog that has been chorused, delayed and reverbed to an extent that would make a fart sound nifty.) B. Now this is being overly picky because you can work around this complaint by thinking for a little bit. But, I thought some of the modules could have had more variety in the parameters that could be modulated. ( Ignore this statement. It is the same a wishing that the horn on your new ferrari was pitched just a tad lower. You got your ferrari deal with it. )

In the past I have owned the Korg MS-20, DW8000 and Wavestation A/D; Yamaha DX7, SY77, TG77, SY99, TX16W; Roland JX-8P (don't have strong feelings for roland gear sorry); Oberheim Matrix 6, 6R, 1000; Arp Oddysey; Kawai K5r, K5000s; Emu Esynth Keys; Ensoniq ESQ-1, ESQ'M; Alesis D4, DMPro, I am waiting on my Red Andromeda, and there are several I am probably forgetting. No bragging here, just stating a long association with programming different synths, so you know I am not a snot nosed brat posing cause he spent an hour on a reaktor demo.

This synth is a Chameleon. I was hoping, when I bought this, to explore the patching that I never did when I had my MS-20, but I got way more than that. It is a synth design workshop. A place where you build a type of synth and then play with it for a while. I have thus far built a FM synthesizer, a common 1 Osc Synth and a Additive Synthesizer. I have built these three and started making different timbres with them as basic starting points.

So far, I have tried to model the signal path of most of the earlier synths that I have owned. Did it sound just like the old synths? Probably not, but it sure is hell didn't sound as bad as they could sound.

What is this crap anyway about trying to sound like an old synth. We are synthesists we make pictures with sound, we delve in the mystic realm of aural excitation. What painter would go buy a new pallette of paint because it has the new grey looks just like the same old grey he has at home.

THE COOLEST THING ABOUT THE NORD MODULAR is the fact that I have to stop myself from tweaking a patch. I made a standard Pulse Width Modulation 2 Osc Synth and started setting up the knobs three times. Each time I started tweaking the patch and got to a point where I didn't know which parameters to put on the knobs. I have not been this tweak happy since I had my MS-20 and Oddysey which had no presets. I have my 1 Osc patch which already has been edited to make 10 completely different and totally useful timbres without adding a single module or chord.

anyway , all right top stuff!!