With the music technology industry preparing itself for this month’s Winter NAMM Show, thoughts are inevitably turning to the new gear that 2019 will bring us. However, Novation has stolen a march on its rivals by giving its Peak hybrid synth a significant update already.
Peak version 1.2 landed right at the end of 2018, and added a number of features that will make you sit up and take notice. For a start, there are 43 new wavetables in the Oscillator Wave menus, meaning a massively increased sonic palette right out of the gate.
That’s not all, though - Peak 1.2 also adds two freely-assignable, non-voice-specific LFOs (you now have a total of four to play with), and pitchbend can be used as a modulation source, too. Speaking of modulation, the Mod Matrix has been updated to show sources and destinations on the same page, putting an end to toggling between them when you’re making assignments.
You can also route non-voice-specific modulation sources to Peak’s FX parameters in the new four-slot FX Mod Matrix, giving you even more sound design options. Then there are the ADSRs, which now have a Hold stage and can be set to loop between the Attack and Decay stages. The creative possibilities are endless.
Elsewhere, the changes keep on coming. Initialise Manual Mode is an option that lets you maintain the current positions of all knobs and sliders when the Initialise button is pressed rather than restoring them to their default positions. This enables you to instantly get hands-on with new patches or create random ones. There’s now microtuning support, too - 16 tuning tables can be edited and saved for recall within any patch - and new preset soundpacks from Patricia Wolf and GForce Software are on hand to showcase the power of Peak’s new features.
In short, a great synth has got even better. There are sure to be new synths announced at NAMM, but with Peak being such a powerful and versatile performer, why wait for them?
Find out more on the Novation website, and check out a full playlist of Peak 1.2 videos on YouTube.