Clavia Announces Nord Lead 3 Virtual Analog Synthesizer

April 21, 2000 -- Nord Lead 3 is a 20-voice synthesizer offering a wide range of features. A new type of unison with maintained full polyphony opens up extremely rich and fat polyphonic sounds. With Nord Lead 3, Clavia also introduces the industry's most user-friendly and intuitive user interface with endless rotary knobs and LED graphs for total and immediate control. Creating and editing sounds has never been easier.

The Sound

Top-quality sound
Nord Lead 3 comes with 20-voice polyphony. The sound engine of Nord Lead 3 is completely redesigned. High-speed DSPs and high-quality DACs guarantee supreme sound quality.

Get F A T without losing voices
Nord Lead 3 introduces Adjustable Unison without voice reduction! Imagine the power of ten detuned oscillators per note, synched or non-synched, and still having full polyphony. And if that's not fat enough, hit the Mono button and launch all Nord Lead 3 oscillators in a single keystroke!

The new extensive oscillator section
There are two separate oscillator groups, each providing you with six different waveforms, plus an additional built-in sync oscillator. The extra sync oscillators make it possible to create two separately synched waveforms per voice. In other words, no need to sacrifice one audio oscillator just to sync another. Clavia also introduces Sinus Modulation (SM) - a very hands-on form of FM.

Two high-quality filters
The Filter section of Nord Lead 3 holds two separate multi-mode filters which can be routed in series or in parallel, making it possible to create multi-peak filters with adjustable peak spread. Select between LP, BP, HP, LP-HP, LP-LP and Classic mode. The Classic filter emulates the characteristics of a classic analog filter.

Modulation heaven
Nord Lead 3 offers up to 3 LFOs/Envelopes PER VOICE plus the additional Global Vibrato. The Global Vibrato acts equally on all voices in the sound. Each LFO can also be hard-synched to MIDI clock.

Four separate Morph groups + Timbre select
The Morph function lets you continuously control defined ranges of up to 26 parameters in a sound, using only a single control source. This lets you produce radical changes to a sound in a very fast and easy way. There are four Morph groups available for each sound and you may assign up to 26 different parameters, distributed as you wish among the four Morph groups. The Morph groups are hardwired to one control source each: Velocity, Aftertouch, Modulation Wheel and Expression Pedal. With the Timbre function you can switch between two complete parameter setups in a sound.

The User Interface

What you see is what you hear
Clavia combined endless rotary knobs with circular LED graphs for ultimate control. This means that you always have full visual overview of a sound. As soon as you select a new sound, the correct values of all parameters are shown instantly by the parameter LEDs, and you can adjust the knobs from their current positions without glitches. When you control Morph groups and Timbre the values of every assigned parameter are shown in real-time by the corresponding LED graphs.

Aftertouch and Velocity sensitive keyboard
Nord Lead 3 responds to both Aftertouch and Velocity from its internal keyboard and sends/receives over MIDI.

4-part multitimbral
Nord Lead 3 is 4-part multitimbral with dynamic voice allocation. Each part (Slot) can send and receive MIDI on a separate MIDI channel.

Connections
4 Audio outputs. Each part (Slot) can be routed to a separate output or to two outputs for stereo. 1 Headphone output, 1 Control pedal input, 1 Sustain pedal input, MIDI In, MIDI Out, MIDI Thru. Software upgradable over MIDI.

Visit www.clavia.se for more info.