Are Peak owners allowed too? I opted for a Peak over a Summit due to space constraints. I’ve heard that the Summit keybed is a little lacking (I’ve never played one) and I really only have room for one synth with lots of keys so I’m holding out for something else.
It’s really a lovely synth! I’m a sucker for all those knobs right there - ready for sound shaping! Analog emulation + FM + Wavetables, all with a great UI
Since you mention patches, I think it’s worth sharing this post from @TBN on the Peak thread. Some nice FM style patches - I love the more realistic sounds
I also have loaded some of @cuckoomusic’s Peak patches (they’re good!) and picked through some that they have on the Librarian. I haven’t done enough sound design to really share anything yet - I normally just find a patch that I kind of like and then start tweaking from there.
not going to lie - I’m guilty of this right now. Only because I don’t have a bigger keyboard (yet!). Can’t wait for the day to really put the polyphony through its paces.
This. So much this. Right now it just feels like access to multiple sounds in the same patch. But setting two animate scenes really fills up the mod matrix and doesn’t feel that useful to me (since they’re simply on/off).
This video really helped sell me on the Peak! Although it’s a shame that you can’t save the offsets in the presets (power cycling the machine resets the LFOs as far as I know). Maybe a feature request!? It should be possible. If you want it, then ask for it
Love me some good pitch bends! I wish the Peak/Summit had an option to default pitch bend amount to +1 - afaik you have to go in and change it for each OSC. On the other hand, it’s pretty cool that you can set that on a per-oscillator basis.
Writing this post, I think I found 3 feature requests that I’m going to send in to Novation
Here’s a sample patch I just made. Summit/Peak, to me, are like the OB-6 in the sense that for SOME strange reason (even though it didn’t remotely at first!) it has a sound that I absolutely adore.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been using my Sennheiser monitors more lately than my cheaper Sonys but wow does the Summit sound amazing. The difference though between the OB-6 and Summit/Peak, of course besides being American made, is that to get that sound you have to work for it on the Summit/Peak but on the OB-6 it just kind of oozes out, they’re both satisfying in different ways. I’ve played a Quantum in person and I still prefer the Summit even with its lack of feature set comparatively, it’s sharp, clear and can be as warm as you like.
In this patch the wavetable really adds the necessary digital grit to an otherwise simple patch… Just a looping envelope modulated by an LFO with a boatload of effects and subtle tweaks in the menus.
I’m no programmer but I’ve been practicing lately and getting much better. Just a direct recording with no limiting or compression, there might be a click in there and it’s just when I turned off a plugin I accidentally had on my monitor mix, it was never on the track.
That’s what I was going for! Something “classically Peak/Summit”… I also started to feel stoned after lying down for 5 minutes with it playing in the background and figured what the heck, might as well share it.
This is partly why I haven’t released any music in a few months, I just sit here and kind of explore now, and having just got the DFAM/Subharmonicon/Mother-32 setup, it’ll be a long while before I release anything proper, but I can release demos until then
I’m starting to create “templates” for this exact reason. Just a series of patches in Bank D that are a click a way with all the settings fine tuned to how I tend to use them.
Ah great idea! I think you should only need to make 1 patch - there’s a setting where you can choose your own Init Patch.
EDIT: errp, I was wrong about this. The Initialize button either gives you the ‘Init Patch’ or whatever is Live on the knobs. Would be a cool feature if you could customize the Init Patch. Please correct me if I’m wrong
I can’t play keys worth a damn but having a five-octave midi keyboard has been critical for me ever since I plugged one in to my Monomachine. It opens up the synthesis palette because stuff just behaves differently when it’s several octaves apart. You might have intended to be making one kind of patch, but pitched down four octaves all of a sudden it’s doing something very different and it leads you in another direction. You often wouldn’t discover those sounds if you’d have had to step up and down the octave transpose on a smaller keyboard.
Eg, here’s a thing I did that was sync music for a short clip for an artist. The modulated creepy alien pad thing is one patch on the Peak, played in live and it uses a mix of low notes and high notes - they go together in a really nice way and I wouldn’t have found that combined sound on a Keystep.
I can “play” them slowly a bit from just being around music for so long but I am in no way a keyboard player, pretty bad with one hand and quick chords? No thanks! I do however find with synths the added range adds a much needed dimension, even if it’s one bass note. The patches often behave differently up and down the keyboard.
Does anyone know the best way to get in touch for feature requests? I suppose Calc is on the board here but I don’t necessarily want to bother him if that’s not the right avenue.
They have this for sale at like over 15% off and I’m honestly considering it. I have a DT and DN at the moment and I’m looking for a beastly synth. Should I get this or maybe wait and see what next year would offer?
Summit and Peak sound so good. Peak gives me some serious P12 vibes, but with a much knobbier interface. And the dual filter on Summit, wow, powerful. It’s good to see Novation kicking butt so hard, getting back to their Nova/Supernova dominance in the poly market, but now with analog filters.
In an effort to curb filling my studio with more instruments and not go into debt, I’ve decided that I’ll use plug-ins for all my polyphonic synth needs. But those Mike Pensini and Alphacode videos aren’t making it easy.
I wouldn’t be mad if they partnered up with Brainworx to make some TMT-powered plug-in versions at all. I wouldn’t even wait for a voucher to nab those.
Agree with a lot of what’s been said here. Amazing synth with such a fun interface. I only had it in my studio for a few weeks but was using it every day and ideas just poured out. Would love to have one for real some day.
I opted for a Peak over a Summit due to space constraints. I’ve heard that the Summit keybed is a little lacking (I’ve never played one) and I really only have room for one synth with lots of keys so I’m holding out for something else.
not going to lie - I’m guilty of this right now. Only because I don’t have a bigger keyboard (yet!). Can’t wait for the day to really put the polyphony through its paces.
