Namnibor asked in another thread for an update, so I thought I'd post here:
I've finally downloaded the free sounsets for the Ultranova and went through them. Most of the sounds therein aren't particularly impressive, although there are some neat emulations of Supertramp, The Who, and the intro to Fly Like An Eagle (Steve Miller Band) that really show what a good sound designer Daniel Fisher is, or maybe how versatile the Ultranova can be. For a lot of people the lack of third party sounds available for this synth could be a real drawback. Its a good synth for sound designers and folks that like to come up with their own stuff, but sometimes it's nice to have a large library of starting points for any given genre. My main motivation for getting it is to see how well I can get accustomed to a hardware+software environment after having been so spoiled by the fantastic workflow of software-only. Even doing things like sysex import/exports introduce what seems like a weird workflow interruption after not having dealt with it in years. But I'm still very pleased with the purchase... some of the Daniel Fisher sounds show that the touch knobs should not be neglected when creating new sounds, as that's one of the things that makes the Nova synths unique. It also adds a greater expectation for the sound designer I think -- i.e. do something useful with the touch knobs for each sound. That could be intimidating for some designers with regard to how much extra work should be invested into perfecting each sound. The good news is that if you're the type that likes to create sounds from scratch, there's tons of fun to be had with all the modulation possibilities (and realistically you don't always really have to start from scratch, you can always start with one of the built in sounds as a starting point).
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