Clavia

The ubiquitous Nord Stage keyboards just keep getting better.

Clavia's little red devil bought its Swedish creators a fair measure of fame and fortune on its release almost two years ago. But times have changed, and the Nord 2 now has many more competitors in the virtual analogue stakes. Paul Nagle leads from the front.

In a synth market dominated by the Japanese and American manufacturers, it's a pleasant surprise to be looking at a synth made in Sweden — especially when it's as technologically advanced as the Nord Lead. Gordon Reid sees red...

Clavia have taken advantage of the software-based nature of their virtual analogue Nord Lead to release a comprehensive upgrade, installed as standard in new instruments and available to existing users for a small fee. Gordon Reid checks it out.

Clavia's latest product is something else; an affordable modular hardware synth whose selection of modules and signal routing is user-definable in software, offering the synthesist staggering scope for sound design. In the first of this two-part review, Paul Nagle cross-modulates his joy input with Rapture envelope and goes into self-oscillating ecstasy...

Paul Nagle concludes his look at Clavia's groundbreaking new Nord Modular.

One of the advantages of a software-based instrument is that it can evolve over time, as its makers add new algorithms and refinements. Clavia's Nord Modular has undergone exactly this process, and its editing software has also migrated to the Mac. Gordon Reid tries out the latest version, along with its baby brother, the MicroModular...