Select a Square wave on your LFO 1 and a low rate to hear this dramatic octave up and down action and gradually increase the rate and the sustain on the Mod Envelope for some tearing analogue sonic action. Interestingly, you can also modulate all three oscillators simultaneously with LFO 1 as part of the extensive modulation options that Peak has – more on these shortly.įinally in the Oscillator section, a Shape amount dial can be adjusted manually or set to be modulated by either the Mod Env 1 or LFO 1 sources. There are coarse and fine-tune rotaries, the aforementioned Waveform select buttons and then dials to adjust how the frequency of each oscillator is modulated by both Mod Env 2 and LFO 2 Depths. On the far left of the Oscillator section, you get range options that utilise an organ draw-bar method to quickly transpose your octave (16 being the lowest, 2 being the highest). Tubey, for example, adds a slight distorted effect, while Octaves pitches things up and Zing seems to bring the upper mids through for more presence. ![]() With the oscillators, you can choose from four standard waveforms and then a further 17 that include some fairly obvious Random and Chord waveforms some instrument-based ones (Electric Piano, String, Organ and so on) plus some which are less obvious (Harsh, Wobbler and Tubey). So, to the synth engine of the Novation Peak itself and we have those eight voices, each with three oscillators, ring mod and noise sources. The racks shown in the main picture do not come with Peak, which is a shame, as they look very cool and angling it as shown makes it much better to control (I put Peak on some books to angle it). The Novation Peak is sadly not angled for desktop use, so sits rather flatly – although this doesn’t detract too much from screen or control visibility. It’s very well designed throughout, with a logical layout, so you get the main controls and screen top left and the signal flow of the synth engine starts from oscillators through to effects flowing left to right (wth the two LFOs top right). The 40-plus rotaries feel good, not too loose, and have centre reference points on suitable parameters (coarse and fine tune, for example). Unboxing the Novation Peak, we have a solid desktop unit that feels like a great-quality product. The price point is high – or at least you might consider it that – but there’s a lot of hardware with specs similar to these for a lot more money, so let’s see how Peak competes. The signal path takes a true analogue route through overdrive, filter and distortion sections and the effects are pure digital, so you can see we have something of a hybrid synth on our hands, albeit one that screams analogue in terms of sound and looks. ![]() There are three of these (plus noise and ring mod) per voice, and a maximum of eight notes of polyphony, depending on the voices used per sound. ![]() The signal path on the Novation Peak starts with the (digital) Oxford Oscillators – or ‘analogue sounding’ NCOs (Numerically Controlled Oscillators) – which Novation says run at such a high clock rate that you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart from true analogue oscillators. To be fair, it’s not really an eight-voice Bass Station, but it does share much of that synth’s heritage and sound.Ĭhris Huggett, the man behind the Wasp, the OSCar and Bass Station was a design consultant on Peak and, as we’ll see, there’s a big analogue sound here, although with more digital input at its heart than Bass Station had. Four years down the line and we now have Peak. At the time, there was a rumour – possibly started by me – that an eight-voice version would be next.
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