Ultranova - Got one! Here are my thoughts..

[MBTC]

I greatly appreciate the note, although these sound packs have been out for a while, and I do already have them. I think Novation released them around the time they released the synth itself, and they touted an ongoing commitment to sounds which they unfortunately have not really made good on. In my opinion they are sort of along the ilk of "preset material", in the sense that they are good to have as a starting point but they do not begin to exploit the possibilities of the synth.

The Daniel Fisher sounds are kind of an exception, because there are what I would call some seriously fun novelty patches, like a redo of the intro riff from Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller Band), that unique boing sound from Life's Been Good (Joe Walsh) and other 70's analog fun. He really is quite good at understanding what makes a sound and recreating difficult ones.

I did exchange emails with Rob Lee some time back, and he said he is currently on the road traveling but when he gets back, he will resume work on his UltraNova sound set which is due out in July. That's exciting if you're into EDM sounds because he has done some fantastic work on soundsets for other synths. He has had a love-hate relationship with the UltraNova. He liked it better than his Virus Ti2, enough so to buy two of them and send them off to have them recolored (complete with letter screen prints) in black and white (the blue did not work with his studio color coordination apparently)! Then he got frustrated with them because of no unison spread feature (with the Ultranova you can accomplish similar using other mechanisms, but it upset him anyway) so he sold both those boards. He then decided he missed them and the great VST editor so he ordered two more So, not being able to be 100% the release of his sound pack will happen, I'm just crossing my fingers but at the same time not holding my breath. This synth is one that most folks will be able to start with a preset as a starting point and create lots of great sounds themselves. Still, I'd like to see at least one great soundset so it will be fantastic if Rob decides to complete that project. I know of at least one other prominent sound designer that is considering doing a soundpack for it, but he has not yet purchased one so I'm not counting my chickens on that one until I hear more from him.