Novation Peak

The Peak is a ?players? synth, that is to say it got so many ways to control the sound in real time with aftertouch, pedals and all the standard ways with velocity, mod-wheel and so on. All that can be used in complex interwoven ways through the 16 slot modmatrix to make it respond in the way You want it. And the On panel accessibility makes it easy to tweak in real time.
Can you tell I love this piece of kit yet ;)

As with any synth you should go out and listen to it yourself, but to be truthful I bought this on the strengths of the demos I listened to online but I do try to follow that advice myself. I will try to give you some thought for what to listened for or how to get there, so I hope this review will be of use to you.

OSCILLATORS: They are, as you probably know, digital; made in there FPGA processor at a very high resolution, but also have that lively analog character if you want, it can be precisely dialed in you see.
There created Sine, Triangle, Saw and Square are very versatile and good enough sounding in my ears not to disappoint. They can be augmented with the Shape Amount that creates different characters of the waveshape; in the Sine it adds harmonics, Triangle wavefolds in one direction and gets more like a square in the other. The shape shifting is totally smooth and without steps when modulated but turning the knob itself will step as it is a programmable synth.
Great span of sound of different character in the basic waveforms; then we got the wavetables! With some extra span in the sound department this is such a good addition to the basic forms.
There are 3 separate oscillators, and what is even more interesting is that you got some extra oscillators, if you will, hidden too. If you want to Sync an oscillator you wont loose one that will be the sync, there is a sync oscillator given for each or the 3. So you can have three synced oscillators at the same time.
Then there is the ?super saw? through the menu system, you are not getting there through the shape knob. In the menu you can set the spread and detune of the Saw, it can also like so much else be modulated in all sorts of ways.
BASS: Inherently I would say the different waveshapes are very behaved and so you wont get earth shattering bass just through the choosing of a sine or triangle. But add a little pre-filter drive through the dedicated knob in the filter section and you got all the bottom end you need. And you wont loose it through cranking the resonance but we will get back to the filter in a later section.

MIXER: In the mixer section you can gainstage you oscillators and add in some other effects. So there is a knob for each Osc, then there is one for dedicated ringmodulated Osc1 and 2, so you can have a ringmodulated signal and yet add some clean Osc1 sound. There is a noise knob, noise can be filtered from White down to dark-grey or what ever one calls low frequency noise in a synth, you do that through the menu system. And you got a master mix that sends it to the filter.
The Peak as an enormous dynamic range so some really low level signals do tend to get a bit noisy but I would rather have that than they would make those part of the synths engine unaccessible; but you need to be aware of it and doing plucky FM sounds seem to be prone to some extra hiss that one needs to manage through filtering or changing part of the patch.

FILTER: Statevariable and a heritage from the Basstation. 12 and 24dB slope on LP, BP and HP all which can selfresonate. In my Peak there is a character difference between a fully opened LP 12 or 24, so that is something to keep in mind for shaping the sound.
All of the types sound nice, singsong resonance for some extra spice and here is the real kicker: almost No loss of Bass when using resonance! So you might like Ladder filters but Statevariable keeps your base in place.
There is a dedicated knob for Driving the signal into the filter, saturating the signal making it fat or harmonically distorted; great fat sound.
You got a knob for frequency modulate the filter from Osc3, also a very cool sound creation tool.

I can?t list all of the capabilities of the Peak so I will skip some, I hope you will be aware of this.
So lets carry on:

GOT IT ALL: A couple of features that might get overlooked. Take the Slew setting for the LFOs; you can round of the corners of a square LFO by setting the amount of slew in the menu, making the waveshapes of the LFO?s immensely more variable.
You can set the amount of drift on the OSC, but also add a hidden LFO for making long shifts in drift. There is a setting for the divergence of the filter to ?age? it or just make it more characterful.
You can chose to Keysync the oscillators, in some patching this is needed to get that punch or consistent sound that one is after, sometimes one want that oldskool looseness. Sync the LFOs, re-trigger on key or free running. Set up Unison, 1-8 voices and the stereospread of those.
2 LFOs and 3 Envelopes that can be routed all over the place!

OVERDRIVE: Like distortion? So yeah, first we can drive the signal into the Filter, then we can post-filter drive it into the VCA and this is per voice so they got the same harmonic content whether it is 1 or 8 notes voiced, then if one use velocity it will vary but it will vary per voice. In the effect section there is an analog distortion too, that works over all the signal so it is more like the Organ distortion or guitar that we are used too. That is a lot of distortion! And they all have there own character so again, a great tool for sound design.

MODULATION MATRIX: 16 slots that can have 2 modulators affecting each other onto the destination source. One can mix and match as one like, if you use a source or destination it is not unavailable or some such, you can build complicated modulation soundscapes but also get direct control over sound.
I got a poly-aftertouch on my keyboard, I can use that to open up filter or add post-drive and all can have there own span within the parameter chosen.
Then we got the use of an Expression pedal source, and 2 animate buttons that can be linked to pedals.
This is what I mean when I say it is a players synth, you can affect the sound of the patch in so many ways with just playing. This is one of the best synths out there to add modulators to your sound. And with 16 slots and the amount of control the settings within the matrix gives you it really opens up the sound design possibilities.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! If you like the sound of the PEAK it is a no-brainer to get this synth. It is the filter you need to explore the most as I feel the OSC are versatile and sound good enough for all uses.
There is some talk about updating the engine and from what I?ve heard it sounds very interesting. One could implement full MPE compatibility, upload your own wavetables, some further work in the FM department.

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.

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.