Novation UltraNova!!!!

[Ingonator]

My Blofeld has 1024 memory locations and it's full only with my own patches and my other favorite patches.

1024 patches...how many of those do you actually use? how many of those sound exactly the same?

i bet you could easily shave that number down to 128 presets that are unique and/or are useable


ive heared thousand of sounds for synths like the DX7, the Nord series, even the Virus, most are crap, most are basic copies of each other, and all could easily be condensed into a small bank of decent usable sounds

quantity doesnt equall quality.

Like i said those are already the best of the patches which are available. They include the commercial banks from Rob Lee and Jörg Schaaf and my own almost finished bank (which is almost 128 patches now). Others are the factory banks and free soundbanks including adaptions from the Micro Q.
Of course i don't need all at once but i don't like reorganizing the patches anytime when i need a certain patch and the patches i need are mostly from different soundbanks so loading a single bank makes no sense. For this reason i organized the patches with Sounddiver. One library contains all patches and another one the favorites.

I don't see where is the problem of having more memory locations.
The Virus TI has almost 4000 memory locations BTW (since OS 3) where around 1500 could be overwritten. The Clavia Nord Wave has 1024 memories too. The Supernova series had between 512 and 1024. Even the tiny Alesis Micron has up to 1000.

[MakingSounds]

At first I did not like the idea of this synth replacing the supernova having owned a supernova rack and now a nova rack but starting the warm to the thing. Lots a complaints about only monotimber but I hardly if ever used my supernova and nova in mutli timber any way. Sharing feathures such as 37 keys and a vocoder thats about all it shares with the micron,microkorgs and akia minak because if the heart of this synth is a supernova engine single or multi timber it should beat all of them as the supernova completed with the big synths virus,leads,q and mirco q not the small synth ones. I see this competing with the waldorf blo and mircro q racks and maybe korg r3. I will say yes its exspensive at £500 but it has a very good spec and if you read it and watch the promo videos has 300 patches and 200 user patches you could probably save over the 300 stardard patches giving you 500 patches stored on the synth and unlimited on a pc/mac and the lack of knobs i dont think will be a problem as the novation supernova and nova are easy to uses even with the editor your probaly be twisting more knobs than clicking a mouse. Yes toyish in design but look what the yamaha dx a classic.

[blakecasimir]

3 octaves and 8 knobs are not enough for me.
I will keep my Novation KS5.
For 600 Euro one may get a Supernova on ebay

*sighs*

I'll still argue that the Supernova, Nova and KS series had bloody frustrating modulation controls, but they were all excellent synths with a great "liquid VA" sound. Not analogue, something a touch more digital but not clinical. Novation had something good going.

As for the anti/pro-multi-timbral argument... what if you you want to layer parts? Sure, I don't use the 4 parts on my KS for sequencing now, but to build larger sounds. To be fair, this Ultranova is coming from a good pedigree so one part of a Nova/KS sound can often sound BIG. Still sucks that for £499 you won't be able to layer them at all though. (Yeah I know, you could record a part down into the DAW first... if you're doing sound design rather than composition, that just slows things down.)

[sysscan]

More like back with a whimper. Novation just needs to make a Supernova VST, either native or Powercore.

[Arksun]

FYI, in case anyones interested. 150 of the presets on this synth are by me

[zeep]

FYI, in case anyones interested. 150 of the presets on this synth are by me

How did you find the programming?

[Arksun]

FYI, in case anyones interested. 150 of the presets on this synth are by me

How did you find the programming?

Programming the sounds was pretty straight forward. Plus having worked for Novation before the transition was smooth to using this synth engine. Judging by some earlier posts people think all the parameters are only accessible via the software. Actually you can access everything from the synths control surface, the software is just there to make it even easier to program.

The touch knobs can be a lot of fun to play with as they can be assigned to pretty much anything. It certainly feels like this synth is aimed as perhaps more of a live tool than a main workhorse. Still sounds great mind

[TiUser]

I am not sure about this product. It seems to be a mixed bag.

If I've seen right it can serve as an Automap controller too... so maybe some view on price should be adjusted.

It is for sure a live tool. Once you use a pc on stage the view on all HW gets a different perspective...

[TiUser]

Just realized that the Ultranova serves as an audio interface too...

It seems to be an interesting companion to a notebook, containing anything needed - as well as being a stand alone synth.

What I instantly missed when looking on the operation panel is direct patch select buttons. Novation can't be serious to expect a live player scrolling through bank/patch lists live or preorganize patches in chains only... here everything is about spontaneity and direct access.

When looking at the Automap integration I asked myself where the Automap "page" buttons are hidden? The Ultranova manual does not provide much information here and the hint on the Automap manual does not answer this question either.

Finally the housing looks like plastic... Why not some sheet metal to make it a performance tank?

I start to like the idea but the implementation seems to lack some care in detail.

[TiUser]

...digging the manual.

It looks like the synth's audio can be streamed into a DAW? If this was true it competes with Access TI... does it?

Who complains about a Virus Polar just having a 3 octaves keyboard? I find that ideal as a compact portable second instrument. I guess no one would seriously consider such a thing as it's main instrument... would he?

I agree that it's not great not having multimode - but on the other hand... add a laptop and you have a powerhouse - everything else is already in the Ultranova.

The gooseneck mic signal can be routed to your host too, so why using the internal vocoder? You can use any vocoder VST.

I end up with missing direct patch recall buttons most.

You all talk just about the synth engine but see that you get an Automap controller, a USB audio interface with mic and a synth all together in a compact package - the price isn't worse to a Korg R3 or a Roland Gaia.

The make quality is another story, but is a Cakewalk PCR made much better, a controller for already nearly half the price of the Supernova?

I admit I am tempted when I look at the total package. Just I haven't a budget to spent on this toy right now - and I never buy things anymore that just come out, I wait and see how it will evolve. But it's for sure an interesting piece of gear.

[TiUser]

Mr. moderator - delete this if possible...

[Vectorman]

I'm mildly intrigued by this - very compact and reasonably inexpensive package for a VA/wavetable scanning synth for live use. I'd have to hear more demos to get a better idea of its sound, though - right now, what we have to go on isn't much, especially in regard to knowing what the new wavetables sound like.

[DrApostropheX]

Somewhat on-topic: does anyone want to buy my Novation Nova (laptop)? I have the box around here somewhere, just need to dig it up. I got it in 2000 and used it in the studio only for a year or two then shelved it when I discovered VSTs The pots may need some cleaning (I'll need to check), but otherwise it's in great shape.

[rob_lee]

TBH i can't see anything *Ultra* about this synth Sure it might sound nice and when i first seen it i thought,wow im having one of these only to find it's got no Multi-Mode *Ultra* getting stuck on a name to me says *Has Everything* not so in this case..Should have been called *Nova MKIII*or whatever.
Just my opinion of course..I can get a Blofeld Desktop for less which does more.

Rob

[contrast]

It looks neat in some ways, but I wish it had some more modern synth features, and I hope the touch sensitive knobs don't work anything like they do on some of the other Novation products like the Nocturn...