Novation PEAK 🧻🧻🧻🧻

Revisited 6th Dec 2024

Perhaps due to the woody bits at the ends of the box it’s taken a while for the PEAK’s second hand price to come down to my bite and I’m well behind the first reviewers. But then I have a different take on this machine. I’ve bought a whole lot of Novation keys and the Mininova was the very thing that got me back into hardware. I want to know how this compares to the (now deprecated) Ultranova which is now trading at a quarter of the price. I want to know if I should write another gushing and annoying review. Fortunately not likely!

💀Let’s start by noting that my MiniNova fell to pieces and the knobs on my Bass Station 2 rotted off. The Supernova developed a fault in the amplifier section. This one looks like it was built properly and perhaps the price is proof of a better build. It *weighs* like a Virus but is it as woody?

The flow is familiar to previous Novation keys. Three digital oscillators are mixed and fed into one traditional analogue LP/BP/LPfilter. All oscillators are equally endowed: all include wavetables with a number of digital treatments such as synch available inside, and able to be cross modulated. There is an extensive patch bay tucked into a small menu display. The effects are few but useful.

Straight outa Oxford

These ‘new’ Oxford oscillators are not conceptually different to those in the Ultranova but in some way more detailed. Try doing Kawai 100F screeches and you will be much impressed – it’s actually the best flip-out I’ve heard from a semi digital machine. There’s traditional waveforms and preset wavetables – which at least now have helpful names – and you can add 60 tables of your own as you like. ‘Virtual’ synch is built into each oscillator as with the previous machines. If you’ve used the Ultranova you’ll very quickly be up to speed.

It’s then up to the filter which apparently is from the Bass Station 2 without the ‘acid’ version. It has drive before and after and self oscillates and can be modulated at audio speed etc. so most of the grungy tricks on the BS2 apply here. As I work with the PEAK it feels like a ‘greatest hits’ of the Novation brand – take this bit from here and shove it into that bit there. Voila! This is a good thing – the Bass Station and Ultranova are two of my favourites and cross breeding them is a very worthy exercise. You are not hearing anything distinctly new but improved – more of a Roland evolution than a Korg explosion.

You might compare it to the Hydrasynth. That also has three wavetable oscillators, but with one as a sub. There’s also digital manipulations of the oscillators, which are fed into two more complex filters. The effects follow. On paper it sounds like the better machine but even with an excellent control system it has never really made me happy. I think it’s because it doesn’t feel quite as raw and pliable. It has less ability at MOOG style grunge.

Updated fluffing

So is this the only Novation you’ll ever need? Well It’s easier to program with the dedicated knobs than with the Ultra’s nine assignable controllers. It has ten less voices – and only one filter – but this analogue filter is better. USB connection is now standard and much less tedious hair pulling trying to connect the machine. Maybe your first Novation (if you can afford it). But no – not the only.

Over time I’ve swept back and forward between the extremes of ‘get rid of it’ and ‘try harder’ – currently in the latter. Once I found that you can create quite horrible noises that only analogue machines are supposed to produce – I mean seriously like a polyphonic Kawai 100F – it thrills me. But when I work with the Ultranova there’s subtle textures that the PEAK just cannot reach. PEAK goes from boring to Jack Nicholson without much of a subtle midrange. The Ultranova has a shimmering and exotic voice, often blurry, a little metallic – that cannot be reached by the younger machine.

It hate to tell you this, but …