Peak by Novation

[zerocrossing]

I am speculating that the muted sound is just that the users are not yet calibrated to the log envelopes and are setting them by eye. I can not believe that it will sound dull in real life.

I'm still eager to get to a store that has one, but I have low expectations. If anything, it would seem to me that Novation has sh!t the bed on this roll out. So much talking about NCOs and the feature set and these are the examples they just posted:

https://soundcloud.com/novation_peak/sets/peak-patches

That's got to be the most piss-poor bunch of lame sounds I've ever heard. OK, a few are decent, but only in context of that group, and the one I like the best is sounding like my Bass Station 2. When you compare them to almost any other commercial wavetable synth, software included, it's laughable.

Look at what competitors are putting out for their wavetable synths...

https://soundcloud.com/waldorf-music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCy8xMTANs8

The Sonicstate demo that uses his custom patches is good, and still gives me some hope, but so far I've yet to hear the sound that gets me writing that letter to Santa. I was all set to forget it, but then those SoundCloud demos got posted, and I stupidly thought, "Oh, now they had some time to get some awesome demos together." They just made me want to play with impOSCar 2.

[Sequent]

Thanks, zerocrossing, I'm still interested in checking out Peak in person, but your post reminded me that there's a reason I have as many Waldorf synths as I do and also that perhaps my time is better spent in working with I already have.

[stonestreet]

I have beem having a few of those moments "working with I already have" over the last 3 years. First the Quantum and then the Peak have made me realise I have just about zero experience of wavetable stuff. I have had a play with ImageLine Harmor which is fantastic but my old pc does not quite cope. So I have been researching the Blofeld...

Thanks, zerocrossing, I'm still interested in checking out Peak in person, but your post reminded me that there's a reason I have as many Waldorf synths as I do and also that perhaps my time is better spent in working with I already have.

[EvilDragon]

Harmor is not a wavetable synth tho...

[chk071]

@ zerocrossing: Sounds pretty good to me. Pretty simple sounds, but, what i hear, i like. At least it's better than any other Novation synth i've heard so far. Would have liked a Meganova better, but... gotta eat what's on the table i guess.

[zerocrossing]

@ zerocrossing: Sounds pretty good to me. Pretty simple sounds, but, what i hear, i like. At least it's better than any other Novation synth i've heard so far. Would have liked a Meganova better, but... gotta eat what's on the table i guess.

Well, what I'm saying is that we don't have to eat what's on the table. We have choices.

Those demos don't necessarily sound bad, but I get equally good, and better, sounds in other instruments. There was a sound on the SonicState sounds only demo that I loved, but I sparked up Zebra HZ (equipped with VS wavetables) and made a similar sound. I couldn't get the distortion right, but I threw Decapatator on it and REFLECT for 'verb, and there I was. Not exactly the same, but equally good. Yeah, Zebra doesn't do audio rate mod stuff, but other stuff (Dune 2) does.

It's true that Peak does have a unique feature set. I'm not sure I know of a hybrid that does alias free wavetables, filter fm, fm, and spectacular digital effects. I get that, and all those things are exciting to me. I'm just wondering where the exciting sounds are. I had more fun listening to the Syntronik PPG demos.

[chk071]

@ zerocrossing: Sounds pretty good to me. Pretty simple sounds, but, what i hear, i like. At least it's better than any other Novation synth i've heard so far. Would have liked a Meganova better, but... gotta eat what's on the table i guess.

Well, what I'm saying is that we don't have to eat what's on the table. We have choices.

True that, i wouldn't buy this thing either, if i had the money. Too few voices and features compared to a fully fledged VA i could get for almost the same price.

[stonestreet]

Hi, Harmor as you probably know is an additive engine. However if you make single cycle waves in Edison you can shift drag them onto the image pane and build up a table of however many waves you load in. You can then set location of the "play" head, direction and speed of travel through the waves as you play.

There are You tube videos showing how to set it up. I have only used the demo version so can not save the wave setup however I could save the spectral image and be able to import that back in any time later.

It sure sounds good to me what it can do.
Have fun

Edit:
I read a paper (Wavetable Synthesis 101. A fundermental Perspective) that showed how wavetable and additive are related. Very interesting read.

Harmor is not a wavetable synth tho...

[zerocrossing]

Hi, Harmor as you probably know is an additive engine. However if you make single cycle waves in Edison you can shift drag them onto the image pane and build up a table of however many waves you load in. You can then set location of the "play" head, direction and speed of travel through the waves as you play.

There are You tube videos showing how to set it up. I have only used the demo version so can not save the wave setup however I could save the spectral image and be able to import that back in any time later.

It sure sounds good to me what it can do.
Have fun

Edit:
I read a paper (Wavetable Synthesis 101. A fundermental Perspective) that showed how wavetable and additive are related. Very interesting read.

Harmor is not a wavetable synth tho...

True. There are more than one way to skin that cat, and I'd even say that Peak isn't actually a wavetable synth either. At least the underlying tech seems profoundly different than traditional wavetable synths like the PPG. The character might be somewhat different, but the basic effect is similar. I was even getting some very wavetable like sounds using Bazille. Crossfading between oscillators on my Tempest can sound like an old school wavetable synth. Saying "wavetable" is just a good shortcut when talking about these synths.

[syndicat]

You will find a few really crazy arp patches on Peak in my public demo bank which touches how sonically and "creatively far" the Peak can really go.

http://dettenbach.com/sounds/synthesize ... tion_peak/

audio demos will follow in the next, but just load and try the ten free patches byself.

I own a Virus TI2 (as several real analog + hybride synths from DSI, Moog etc.) since years and was one of the first german Peak customers in 2017.

For me, the Peak is (much) more modern, musical and creativity focused while the TI2 has more features, but does not reach sounding analog so far. Both could be punchy, while the noise floor seems higher at Virus on analog (and partly even SPDIF) outs.

best regards, niels.
http://dettenbach.com

[Jax Pok]

I use u-he synths and a Korg Odyssey I'm really interested in the peak although I wonder if there is any point getting it if I have Zebra HZ I'm very impressed with the pads in youtube videos.