Novation Peak 5-stars Reviews

Unique sound, flexible synth engine

I bought it because I liked the sound, which is, of course, a matter of individual taste. Other than that, the synthesizer is solidly built and very accessible via physical pegs or through MIDI. Has bugs, but only a few, compared to certain other synths (that's why I gave four stars for quality) yet the firmware, as of today, is still being updated. My biggest concern was MIDI transmission errors, but I changed the USB cable and updated the firmware, and for whatever reason, they seem to be gone. That said, a lot of small details in the firmware are reasonable, like the key tracking which takes portamento into account. The analog nature of the filter causes small differences between voices, especially in the case of more extreme settings, but it adds to the color. The filter's self-oscillation, in turn, together with frequency tracking, can act as the fourth oscillator. I use it for "windy" patches. The specs listed on this page are a bit out-of-date: the current firmware features two matrices and four LFOs.

Great synth with flexibility

I've had this synth for a while and its really great. I've tried lots of synths sold lots of synths but the novation peak is gonna stay.

My dream-synth for bread-and-butter sounds

I absolutely love this synth. For those worried it's too digital or VST-like, don't be. Accounting for the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, foldover distortion from overtones, and complex harmonics from modulation, 192 kilohertz would be plenty for accurate sampling. This synth's oscillators are sampled at 12.5 times that at 24 megahertz. Aliasing just isn't a concern here. They're digital, but extremely smooth.

Being digital, the oscillators stay perfectly in-tune, but with voice diverge (basically pitch-drift) and filter-diverge settings, you can do convincing classic patches as well, particularly brass and keys.

The analog filter is extremely smooth and the resonance can cut through the mix, but doesn't sound particularly aggressive. The filter overdrive can help bring out some harmonics, but mostly it does light saturation. The distortion actually sounds more like an overdrive to me. I usually mix filter overdrive and distortion together if I want a gritty sound.

The chorus and delay are fine but nothing to write home about. The reverb, though, is absolutely gorgeous. It's got a lush, airy quality that fits nicely in a mix, so much so that I wish there was an external-in jack so I could route other audio through it.

I first thought the animate buttons were a gimmick, but I use them pretty often for adding accents to notes (animate = level or distortion) or manually rhythmic-gating effects like reverb.

My only gripe is that I wish I could upload more than 10 wavetables to it, or delete some of the factory ones I don't use as much.

All-in-all, it's an extremely versatile synth, and the one I reach for first 90% of the time when making music.

Novation Peak is amazing

The quality coming out of this box is incredible, from warm, generative bass patches to filmscore quality drones, its got it all.

Novation PEAK - My best friend

one of my best purchases. the best solution for the studio. very convenient and friendly interface. now thinking about buying Summit.

It Peaks

The great allarounder. The sound of this hybrid synth is amazing. The oscillators are FPGA and are super stable and very flexible in terms of waveforms and modulation. Their clock is so high you just can't hear anything digital there.

Very clean layout, everything is placed where it is supposed to be and the menu offers in depth sound design with many options. The filter sounds absolutely amazing in any state and the effects are gorgeous, all 3 of them. Bonus feature the mod matrix for the effects, opens up a new sonic territory for experimentation.

Novation has built a reputation of further developing their products, releasing new firmware updates. Peak has already come a long way since its debut and it keeps getting better.

I love it, it will never leave my studio.

Best ever synth

Best Buy great sounding synth

Awesome!

Such a beautiful synth!! The tone is absolutely beautiful. Playability and design is exceptional, and very well thought out! I can't recommend this enough. It's just perfect.

Could not have imagined better

Perfect synth for doing almost anything (bass, pads, keys, etc.)

Its wonderful

I had to think long and hard, and read alot on the internet, before purchasing this one as there is no way to try it out beforehand where I live.

The reasons why I give it only 5 stars is because it deserves nothing less. I've had to send couple of emails to Novation regarding couple of things, and they always replied within 48 hours with very helpful information.

I had to choose between PEAK and DSI Rev2 due to my budget, and I'm very happy I didn't go for Rev2. The main reason? The VCF and audiorate modulation. Yes, alot of audiorate modulation in a poly synth! The FM is gorgeous, FM-ing the filter for some extra dirt is wonderful, and the FX are almost way too good to run PEAK through anything else. Oh, the ringmode is ace too! Plenty of clang! The oscillators are deep and moving, not sterile under any circumstances. Not that Rev2 isint perfectly good synthesizer too, but having 4 lfos with no delay/fade in/fade out is kind of weird, and I'd rather have 2x full featured lfos than 4x with less options.

The online community around the PEAK is also good and growing too so you won't be alone facing your problems, find the facebook group, alot of friendly people to help you out.

One last thing, i've not ran into any serious bugs yet, and that alone is very valuable as many hardware users should know. If you need a flexible sound designing polysynth with beautiful VCF, give PEAK a change. Seriously, that VCF is amazing.