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My review is for the Nord Rack 2 as a synth. I think that the Nord makes an excellent array of sounds, but nothing in the way of "realistic" sounds. What you do get, its edgy grungy or brilliant warpable sounds with lots of knobs to twist. And the knobs have a great solid feel, like on a good mixer. The sound range is very wide, I have seen my speaker cones wobble on some patches and also had the thing make my girlfriend yell at me when it went into the higher register. Think of it as grass roots VA programming.
I currently use the Nord with an Effectron delay unit for thickening the sound a bit, though its not necessary for most sounds. The nord cuts through the mix best imho for the high and middle registers. I tend to pump the bassy sounds with some valve compression or they get lost in the mix a bit.
The arp function is very basic, but if you modify the ADSR and filter ADSR a bit, you can still get a neat sound out of it. To sync the arp, hold SHIFT and SPECIAL, hit it twice to go to lfo2 and then on that sounds corresponding button tap it from 1 to 7 for the speed. It doesnt go extremely fast when sync'd, faster unsync'd.
The price on these used is going down, so get one in mint condition and enjoy a great tool for analogue style sounds. A NL Rack2 should cost around 600 bucks in good shape, I paid 675 to get mine from a respected seller in Near Mint condition with the original manual. Currently, that price should include the PCMCIA card imho.
There are banks of Prophet V emulations that are a great starting point for making your own sounds. The PCMCIA cards make your soundset unlimited, but you need one to save performances. The lack of patch naming is a bit annoying, but not so bad. Patch naming normally keeps me from overwriting patches I wrote, now I have to keep a journal.
The only gripe I have with the unit is the polyphony gets eaten up rather quickly. Stacked OSCs are the way to go for good sounds with this and it takes 2 to 4 times as many voices per note for that. With only 16 notes using 4 parts, you can run out. The NL3 doesnt reduce poly with stacking, but the cost is much higher. Why Nord only makes units with 4 outs is beyond me, the newer models shouldve gotten 6-8 outs to go with the higher polyphony and new features.
A Nord is always best in the hands of someone with other gear, so you can add your own professional effects and not rely on ones built in. Adding a simple used classic delay or multifx unit - sometimes for 100-200 bucks will give you plenty of great possibilities. I recommend researching everything you buy as if it costs 10x as much.
If Nord wants my ideas for improving it:
A Nord Lead 4 would rock with 32-48 poly and 16 multi over 8 outs. A small efx section with a complete disable function would be good for expanding the user group (bpm delay at least). A programmable arpeggiator would be good. A second card jack for phrasesampling and the ability to use a phrase sample like in a wavetable would put it over the top. I would pay $2999 for that!
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