NOAH vs. Nova, Nord or Waldorf?

ohmelas · Post by **ohmelas** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 6:12 am

I believe I want one. It's hardware. It won't crash. It should sound good.

Its a niche synth but will augment great with an XV-5080 and Reason I imagine filling in the holes that I was considering a Nord, Nova, or Waldorf (XT, Q) for.

Any opionions?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 8:01 am

I don't think the NOAH is a niche synth - it may just look that way to us SFP users, because we have a certain understanding of 'unlimited possibilities'

It has a broader range of sounds than any synth on the market - classic Moog and Hammond as well as trancy or techno stuff plus ambience and experimental.
The obligatory ePiano will soon follow and of course the architecture offers a wide range of future expansions.
An ideal chips-and-potatoes synth for live keyboarders.

The biggest problem is to market it appropriately.
The Nord G2 comes with a cute surface and keyboard for roughly the same price as NOAH and Clavia manages to market it without the usual fear about modular complexity - at least that was my impression.

my 2 cents, Tom

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 9:19 am

On 2003-08-29 07:12, ohmelas wrote:
I believe I want one. It's hardware. It won't crash.

It's hardware, that runs software.

It should sound good.

It surely does. Like SFP.

I imagine filling in the holes that I was considering a Nord, Nova, or Waldorf (XT, Q) for.
Any opionions?

Clavia G2 would be great too. If only NOAH had modular and a sampler...

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 4:13 pm

I'd say it's a safe bet CW will port Modular to NOAH some day (maybe even pretty soon). It's too good an opportunity to miss.

ohmelas · Post by **ohmelas** » Sat Aug 30, 2003 6:33 am

My CW loyalty and bias shines through. I do aggree that they have a great approach to their product and yes I realize that they'll be able to do some cool stuff...

How is it then that a company 20 times the size of CW like Roland can screw up a neat product with similar potential like VariOS?

I was not impressed with it at all other than the varible stuff that Roland has done a neat job with--their ported synth stuff is not as cool as it should be and Roland made some great synths back in the day.

As for the Waldorf stuff. I like lots of nobs but can deal with that on computer interface just the same. Creativity has to be intuitive and almost experimental. Clavia, Nord and Waldorf all have that cool edge to it.

How about that effects section of the Nova versus CW? How does that fare with the group?

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sat Aug 30, 2003 4:11 pm

How is it then that a company 20 times the size of CW like Roland can screw up a neat product with similar potential like VariOS?

well Roland haven't released anything interesting since....a long time ago

The Variphrase thing was the last time they seemed to have something but ultimately it's more like a gimmick than an actual great concept (like SFP/NOAH). I haven't heard anything about VariOS since those screenshots of a Jupiter and a TB303 in software form running on it.

ohmelas · Post by **ohmelas** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 7:01 pm

The other limitation of my situation shines through. If I could I'd just buy everything, a Q Rack, an XT Rack, a Novation II Rack, a VariOS, a JP-8000, Nord Lead III Rack, and of course a CW Noah. Problem solved. However, my economic means of this day seem to eliminate that option significantly so I'm forced to make a choice.

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 5:04 pm

I don't think they'll ever port Modular to Noah. John Bowen said that Noah does not allow for dynamic DSP allocation -- once you load something into a slot, that's it. You could, of course, assemble a patch and then load into the Noah synth, but don't you want to be able to hear what you're doing as you make the patch? At least I always do.

Shayne