Novation Peak- not impressed

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EvilDragon wrote:
EDGEK8D wrote:Those oscillators are really quite good with FM it seems. Most digital oscillators fall apart with audio rate stuff.
Because Peak's oscillators are calculated at 20 MEGAhertz.
Definitely.....only ever heard digital audio rate mod like that in eurorack.

Ya know what? All the bragging about bass.....a Peak mono wouldn’t be the worst thing ever made.

I still want the 18 voice with 5 octaves, and four sets of stereo outs...at least.

I really dig the stuff Novation is doing lately. I almost bought an old Nova for $400 before realizing Circuit has two 6-voice Nova engines inside. I wanted that sequencer, and now I have some Nova action too. $200...not bad.
Logic Pro X : Prophet Rev2, Blofeld, Toraiz-AS1, Model D, Minibrute, MOTU 828x, Presonus Eris E7's, dozens of pedals

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Sequent wrote:Thanks for sharing, Jax Pok! Even though it's been through Soundcloud, the gist of the sound still comes through.
Um... does Soundcloud normally add white noise which bursts so you can't decipher anything about the sound anymore, or what?

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Err, no white noise bursts over here.

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I just wondered, because he said that the gist of the sound still comes through. :P If you can't listen through music or sound demos from Soundcloud, and you think that the core of the sound is altered so much that you can't judge it, you should check your ears IMO.

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Good point :)

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Here's my bass patch recorded with me messing about with the filter and amp controls. Only the Peak is used.
https://soundcloud.com/user-423995746/n ... ilter-demo

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Here's some sound tweaking I did
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93m5I97R1I&t=383s
Aiynzahev-sounds
Sound Designer - Soundsets for Pigments, Repro, Diva, Virus TI, Nord Lead 4, Serum, DUNE2, Spire, and others

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Novation Peak + Korg odyssey + Keyscape
and a shed load of reverb, a large shed. The Peak pad is a modified GEOSynths pad.
https://soundcloud.com/humans-r-ants/hole-in-a-hole

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Today i‘ve read an article about superbooth in a German synthesizer magazine and there was a new upcoming novation synth mentioned, which is called Summit, the bigger brother of the peak. 16 voices, bi timbral, 61 keyboard and a second Stereo out. The rest seems to be pretty much the same as the peak. Does anybody have more information because I can’t find anything on the web.

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I just created a track using patches made primarily on the peak. It feels really satisfying to be able to dial in sounds that you like. Let me know what you guys think!
https://soundcloud.com/azimpradhan/faultydungeons
:phones:

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OK, I’ve had mine for a week, here’s my take.

It’s got a kind of generic sound. Very neutral. That’s fine, because I’ve got two other hybrids that are steeped in character.

The presets are sh!t. Init! Init! :lol:

The interface is frustrating. I’ll probably buy the editor. Also, Novation should provide a free editor.

The filter is OK, but I feel like I like the BS2 filter more. Whatever they did to tame it for 8 voices is worse.

Love all the ways to distort and overdrive the signal. If it wasn’t for this, it would go back.

Effects are good. I wish the distortion had a tone control.

Build quality is pretty good. No complaints there. Layout is good.

Wavetables are good... but there’s something very sort of unexciting about them. I’d love it if they added bit and rate reduction effects to the oscillators. At least now there’s a healthy selection of them and they cover a lot of ground.

Anyway, while each bit of the Peak is not the best example of that thing, they form together to make a really good synth. Great? Sometimes. Definitely a good value. I’m putting it up against synths that new cost a lot more. A lot of this is subjective, of course, but if I were to give it a letter grade, it would get a solid B. Maybe when I’m more familiar with it, I’ll up that grade, but that’s my initial feeling.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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I'm lazy about learning... and ended up purchasing presets from Sami, Jamie and a couple of others. Tearing apart their stuff.. helped me tremendously. I tend to migrate to the same sort of timbres... which are largely steeped in analogue type sounds. Brass, synth strings/pads, building blocks for 70s-2000's cover tunes I like. Boring stuff for a lot of folks. For me - much like the OB-6... I find I can get lost in jamming... The Peak holds it's own.

One of the best things (for me) - is real-time manipulation of patches. I use an expression pedal, aftertouch, velocity and the mod wheels a lot.. and the Peak doesn't disappoint. I tend to map the same type of stuff to these external controls, so it makes it easy to know what to expect as I bounce around from one patch to another.

I need to learn Peak wavetable manipulation better - as I struggle to get a wide variety of sounds from the wavetables. Learning curve I suspect - but the wavetable shaping in ITB wavetable synths (like Serum) seem more easily controlled. At least it's easier for me - to shape sounds from Serum's wavetable manipulation than what I am able to do with Peak. Very likely user error.

In any case - lovin' the Peak. It's definitely a winner for me. Definitely recommend looking into patch libs. There are some fantastic ones out there..

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Plake wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 9:36 pm Today i‘ve read an article about superbooth in a German synthesizer magazine and there was a new upcoming novation synth mentioned, which is called Summit, the bigger brother of the peak. 16 voices, bi timbral, 61 keyboard and a second Stereo out. The rest seems to be pretty much the same as the peak. Does anybody have more information because I can’t find anything on the web.
I suppose waiting for Superbooth and the actual announcements, if any, makes sense?


But if true, whoa, that sounds amazing. Thankfully I'll be there at Superbooth so I might get my evil fingers on one... :)

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damnit!

will really have to try and move some cash around, try and arrange to get to superbooth.
would be cool to catch up with a few old friends again and meet some new ones :tu:

was all set for go till my son went and told me i was getting a grandchild :lol:
suddenly im skint again :o

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svenh wrote: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:44 am While I love the idea, spec:s, and layout of the Peak when it works as it should, there are bugs in my Peak that are so serious that it is not very useful for sound design.

Quite often when using the menus, the parameters change in an unpredictable and uncontrollable way. It is not that the parameters change without me touching the synth, but when I change one parameter, other parameters change *in addition to the parameter that I intended to change myself*.

E.g. when turning the dial to the right of the display (labeled 57 in the manual) to change the value in one row of the mod matrix, the value on another row unintendedly changes simultaneously!

And, most unfortunate, when I try to save a self made patch, just tapping the save button four times to quickly save the patch at current slot, a couple of parameters can change drastically during this process, effectively making me loose the patch that I spent a lot of time creating...

This is my first hardware synth ever. My reason for buying it was not to get a unique sounding piece of equipment, but rather to get something that inspires me to design my own sound - lots of dials and sliders that give direct tweakability of almost all paramaters, something that encourages experimentation and gives a fast workflow. Unfortunately, this problem makes patch creation even slower than fiddling with software synths on my computer, since I now spend a lot of time on workarounds when the parameters won't stay at the values I want them to.

Is this a known problem or am I the only one that have reported anything like this? This problem turns the synth to an expensive patch player, rather than a tool that I can use to create my own sounds... I have visited Novations www-page, but it is not obvious where to navigate to submit bug reports. I have tried to e-mail them a couple of days ago, but have not yet received any reply.

(There are other bugs too, e.g. with the arpeggiator, and the pickup function, but this post is long enough already...)
I experienced this with ableton and an ultranova. It is a midi loop. You are sending midi cc while receiving them and it freaks the synth out. I found a max for live device called "midi filter". You can disable midi cc being sent from a synth to ableton. Fixed the issue. Hope that helps.
:)
Man Made Disaster

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