Peak by Novation

[T-CM11]

Novation are anything but priced well, they cut corners to make a buck.

Vs. most other companies that make military grade audio hardware that they sell at a loss, because they're your best friends.
My Remote SL49 is realy solid, for my home studio use. The BSII is even better. I must've bought the special versions, by accident.

[zerocrossing]

So it has 8 voices running at 20 MHz.

I always wondered why nowdays it's a big deal to have polyphonic synth running at something like 88,2 kHz. No one has tried to use FPGA for that purpose before?

Maybe they should run them at 40 mHz, so they don't sound dull like there's a perpetual lp filter on them. It bugged me so much (on all the demos) I went and looked at Nick's osc overview through a spectrum analyzer, and man, I'm right. Dull. Looking at similar videos he did with other synths, nice and full spectrum saws, as expected. In one demo a Novation guy says, "The NCOs are indistinguishable from the DCOs in the Bass Station 2!" That's bull. I've got a Bass Station 2 and the oscillators sound great to me.

I honestly don't feel the excitement. Dull sounding oscillators (woo hoo! They're NCOs! ) 17 wavetables (one is a "random" table that'll sound different every time you load it... so I'm not even sure I'd count it. Who wants a patch that never sound the same way twice?), 2 LFOs, two EGs, some basic FM. The distortion and effects sound great, I'll give it that, but to get me out of bed you're going to have to show me some nice sounding oscillators, and it doesn't have that. I'd recommend a MicroMonsta or Blofeld over this any day. The analog filters don't make up for the dead oscillators. Of course, if you have the cash, the Quantum is really going to be the one to get. Waldorf did it right.

I think Novation over thought this one. I think if they would have called it the "Meganova" (sorry, my marketing skills... but where do you go from Ultra? Meganova? Ananova?) and had the Ultranova's oscillators and the Bass Station 2's filters, I'd most likely be all in. I'd rather have some aliasing and a nice full and bright sounding oscillator than aliasing free oscillators that sound so muted.

Maybe they've tuned it so the filter never opens all the way up, or their purposely muting the high end to avoid harsh tones, but I hope at the very least they include a "bright" osc mode where you get a nice harmonic series out of their waveforms. If not, I'm passing on this. I'm really glad I got the Tempest to use as a poly analog. Sounds great to me. Even Dune 2 sounds better (and has almost all the same features, plus a lot more). If he puts the Legend filter in it...

[EvilDragon]

I don't think they sound muted because they're NCOs. Especially if they're generated at such high rate. It's more likely the case that the filter doesn't open fully up top.

If that's the case, they can probably fix that with a firmware update.

I went and looked at Nick's osc overview through a spectrum analyzer, and man, I'm right. Dull.

So you went to check out a video that has COMPRESSED audio, which very likely doesn't have anything or extremely little above 16k whatsoever to come to that conclusion?

[zerocrossing]

I don't think they sound muted because they're NCOs. Especially if they're generated at such high rate. It's more likely the case that the filter doesn't open fully up top.

I went and looked at Nick's osc overview through a spectrum analyzer, and man, I'm right. Dull.

So you went to check out a video that has COMPRESSED audio, which very likely doesn't have anything or extremely little above 16k whatsoever to come to that conclusion?

I compared like to like. Nick Batt oscillator demos. He does loads of them. I also compared it to a Marc Doty Prophet 6 demo. All from the same Youtube source. I already heard a distinct muting of the waveforms. That can mean anything with a wavetable, but on a sawtooth... well it should look and sound like a sawtooth, all the way up to 20khz. Other synth demos, analog or not, didn't show the same muting. The .002's a little bit, but not nearly as bad. I think the awesome filter on that one makes up for it anyway. It also has a much bigger selection of waveforms to choose from.

Trust me, this isn't something I do unless I hear something (or not hear something) that sounds wrong to me. I've never put a Blofeld, MicroMonsta, Ambika, .002, etc, though a spectrum analyzer. Never even occurred to me even though the only one of those I've ever been in a room with is the MicroMonsta. All the aforementioned synths sound good to me, at least in that respect. As soon as I heard the first MicroMonsta demo I was like, "what the hell does that thing cost?" I'd probably own a Blofeld too, if it weren't for Largo.

I love me a wavetable synth. I love a hybrid wavetable synth even more. If you google search, I literally suggested my AnalNova synth a long time ago. I was super excited for this. It's exactly in my synth budget for this year. I'm pretty disappointed. I'm going for the NF-1m and Dominion Club instead.

[pdxindy]

I love me a wavetable synth. I love a hybrid wavetable synth even more.

That is why the Waldorf Quantum is top of my to-buy list

[rod_zero]

So after you got kicked out of the GS thread you start the ranting here too zero?

C`mon, just let it die.

[zerocrossing]

I love me a wavetable synth. I love a hybrid wavetable synth even more.

That is why the Waldorf Quantum is top of my to-buy list

Yeah... not sure I could swing that. I was hoping this would be a poor-man's alternative, or at least be Ambika level good. The character of the Ambika is just a tad harsh for me. I'll stick to my Tempest until a better alternative comes along.

[zerocrossing]

So after you got kicked out of the GS thread you start the ranting here too zero?

C`mon, just let it die.

Just because I'm not on the love wagon, doesn't mean I'm ranting. Maybe if there were some decent criticism, Novation would notice and could offer a bright osc mode (as happened with ArcSyn), or extend the filter range. The oscs are pure math, eh? Should be possible.

If it just sucked, I'd have left the conversation a long time ago, but it's so close to being a really good synth.

So, I'll assume it was you that reported me to the mods? Nice. No wonder Trump is president. I'm as liberal as they come, but the delicate nature of people astounds me. As I said, mom jokes really only work on children and really dumb people. So now I know.

[rod_zero]

I definitely didn't report you to the mods, neither here or at GS.

As for the Peak I am not sure I like it, it also covers lots of features I want but I am not impressed with the demos. But I have come to realize I need to test the instruments my self because video demos really don't represent the whole experience of programming.

[zerocrossing]

I definitely didn't report you to the mods, neither here or at GS.

As for the Peak I am not sure I like it, it also covers lots of features I want but I am not impressed with the demos. But I have come to realize I need to test the instruments my self because video demos really don't represent the whole experience of programming.

True, a bad demo, or initial set of bad presets (which is seems Peak has) can sour anyone's first impression, but I also can't help but think, "if there's smoke, there's fire." I've been burned by ignoring that. There's one demo that's not swamped with effects that gives me hope:



But it's not that I even think it's bad. The filters sound great. (love my BS2) The distortions sound fantastic. The feature set is... a bit paltry, but OK. It definitely could use more LFOs and at least a pair of MSEGs for fun. I think getting it with some sort of CV modulation generator is a must. Nice move to include that. Really, my only complaint is that in every single demo it sounds like the highs are seriously tamped down. Warm and sweet is nice, but with a wavetable synth, I want some spikes and sparkle too.

[rod_zero]

Amazon has it for 1089 USD https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06Y4FYP ... ation+peak

Seems like a great price, much more competitive and hard to resist.

[stonestreet]

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.

[mowgliMusic]

Analog filters? Just guessing.

Analog filters digital effects

Any other synth have NCOs (Numerically-Controlled Oscillators)?

Excuse my ignorance but is this what they mean when they say it has "Oxford oscillators"?

[bmrzycki]

Excuse my ignorance but is this what they mean when they say it has "Oxford oscillators"?

They're referring to the Oxford Synthesiser Company, the engineering team behind the now-famous OSCar synthesizer. Novation has Chris Huggett working for them, the main engineer for the Wasp and OSCar. It's marketing.

[deastman]

Amazon has it for 1089 USD https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06Y4FYP ... ation+peak

Seems like a great price, much more competitive and hard to resist.

That link shows $1101 USD for me. Plus California sales tax.