Ultranova - Got one! Here are my thoughts..

[Timo]

In terms of sound, how much is the Ultranova like the original Supernova? Can you tell, from hearing them, that they are from the same family (like the Virus A, B, C are to the TI), or are they totally new synth engines? How does it fit in compared against the K-Station series, too, given they have similar feature sets?

Reason being, I checked out a few Ultranova audio demos and reviews on youtube and unfortunately I was disappointed with all of them. To me sounds like it has a kinda plasticky, digital, thin, phasey sound to it. I did however like the K-Station demos from a few years ago.

For example on the Sonic State overview...



... the supersaw at 2:57 onwards on the Ultranova sounds horribly phasey and weak when dialing in the detune and hitting new keys (more specifically it resets the trig phase of all the multiple detuned saws at note-on each time, so you get a "peeow, peeow" sound every time you press a key as they all start in phase then detune away from each other, rather than starting them as free-running entities to begin with, regardless of detune amount) and I've noticed this undesirable artefact effect is common in other people's Ultranova demos too. My Korg Radias does the same thing and I hate it. Furthermore, there appears to be no compensation for the change in volume that is heard when all the saw waves are being phased triggered at note-on (i.e. when they're all summed, creating a large spike in volume at note-on, then decaying away as the individual saws separate), compared to whether they were all free running phase wise (always a more consistent, average level). Same problem with the Radias, so unfortunately I end up never using the supersaw oscillator type.

You say the Ultranova fairs better at supersaws than the TI|2? The original TI|1 had 80 voices of poly using the hypersaw, whereas the Ultranova has upto 18 note poly, so not sure how you figured that?

Monotimbrality is a bit disappointing.

However I really liked the idea of the extended LFO waveforms, some effectively as mini step sequencers. No idea why most synth companies fail to add more musical, creative LFO shapes like these, and instead restrict themselves to just the Sin/Tri/Sq/Saw waveforms (useful though they are, it would be nice to have more creativity and variety).

I do like the touch sensitive knobs, that's a good performance feature for triggering multiple modulations on cue.

Overall very good for the price, though. The price of Virus in comparison is ridiculous.