If your memory goes all the way back and beyond the MIDI controller boom, you’ll remember that Novation once manufactured some pretty cool synthesizers. Not saying anything against their MIDI controllers of course, they made some awesome ones, but I’ve always hoped that Novation would get back to making powerful standalone synthesizers.

It’s been great to see them back on the scene with the UltraNova and MiniNova synthesizers, as well as the analog Bass station II and now also Circuit. Novation MiniNova is the one I’ll be reviewing here. It packs the same monster sound engine as the one in UltraNova, but comes in a smaller package and is considerably more portable.

Into The Nova

Novation MiniNova sports a unique set of front panel controls and a mini keyboard with velocity sensitive keys, but no aftertouch (although the synth engine does respond to it). The chassis is made of plastic, however the front panel is a cool metal surface. The synthesizer is very light (I can easily carry it in one arm) and the overall build quality is quite good for the price. The only thing that might require some extra care is the plastic lever that is used for shifting the synthesizer’s editing matrix, as it sticks out a little bit.

The color scheme is a beautiful Novation blue, yes that’s what I’m calling it, and it features a complimentary blue lighting illuminating the pitch and modulation wheels. The transpose buttons cycle through blue, pink, magenta and red, depending on the octave setting. A dual color scheme of magenta and blue is used for illuminating the Animation buttons, which turn solid red in arpeggiator mode. The design is both attractive and functional, providing good visual feedback of the current state of the controls. This is especially helpful in the dark, although unfortunately there is no illumination of the programming matrix.

The front panel features a microphone input and the back panel holds one audio input, left and right audio outputs, a headphone jack, MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports, and a USB port. The MiniNova receives and transmits MIDI data over USB, but (unlike the UltraNova) it does not have its own sound card, so there is no audio over USB. Also included is the software (VST/AU plugin format) editor and a patch librarian. This editor loads in your DAW and provides access to all MiniNova parameters, but it does not output any audio of its own.

On the device itself, the editing is done via a programming matrix on the right (with four columns and six rows of parameters) and a menu on the left. Four rows are hardwired to pre-defined parameters, however the top two are the so called “tweak” controls that can be assigned to any parameter, much like NI Massive’s eight macro controls. Just to the left of the matrix is a big filter knob (every synth should have a big filter knob!), hardwired to controlling the filter at all times. Underneath the matrix is a row of potentiometer knobs which are used for actual programming and further below are the eight Animation buttons.

The Animate buttons are pressure sensitive and can be used as the activation switches for modulation slots. They can also be used as direct modulation inputs, or for re-triggering the synth’s envelopes. Animate buttons are inserted into the modulation slot itself, completing the circuit so to speak. Once inserted, the Animate button works as a temporary switch, activated as long as you’re holding it down. Handily, there is a hold button just above this row, so that you can keep the modulation active without needing to hold down the Animation button yourself. Alternatively, the Animation buttons can be switched to Arpeggiator mode, which then allows you to activate and deactivate the arpeggiator steps. Finally, the Favorite button allows you to assign up to eight different patches to the Animate keys for quick loading. It’s worth noting that the transitions between patches are not seamless, as there is an audible gap.

This is a great macro control set, ideal for basic tweaking of presets. In order to program a preset from scratch, though, you’re probably going to need to get into the menu first, as this is where you need to select the oscillator type, or set up modulation slots. However, since the top two rows in the programming matrix are freely assignable, you could create your own INIT template patch with these eight extra “tweak” controls mapped to your most used parameters, thus reducing the amount of time you’ll need to spend in the menu and giving you even more direct control.

Although programming a synthesizer using a small menu is not ideal, the menu itself is well organized, making the process relatively painless. Saving the edited patches is extremely easy. A dedicated save button is used to store the changes and an alert pops up when you’re about to overwrite an existing preset. Saving to the same slot does not interrupt playback, however saving to a new slot does, as the synth then switches to that new preset location.

Speaking of presets, a flip switch is used for sorting the available patches in either alphabetical or numerical order. The dedicated preset filter shows presets by instrument type when turned to the left (for example bass, keyboard/lead, pad/strings, etc.) and by genre when turned to the right (rock/pop, hip hop, dubstep, and so on). A feature such as this is obviously helpful for those who are looking for a certain music style, or need to find a particular type of sound quickly.

To the left of the front panel is a dedicated arpeggiator with tempo and latch controls. It is a very powerful arpeggiator, with advanced parameters that are easily accessible through the menu and well worth exploring.

It’s Full of Stars

The oscillator section features three oscillators per voice, with standard analog waveforms, 20 static digital waveforms, 36 wavetables, a noise generator and two ring modulators. Two filters are on offer, each with separate pre-filter drive controls, six envelopes, three LFOs and five FX slots.

The oscillators also feature sync (Vsync, which does not require another oscillator), pulse-width modulation and density, which is an oscillator stack mode with variable detune settings. Density stacks up to eight oscillators at no extra cost to polyphony. On top of all this, MiniNova supports polyphonic unison, although this mode does have an impact on polyphony. It’s also worth noting that there is no stereo spread in unison mode. Indeed, it seems that the sound engine is entirely mono until it hits the stereo effects section, as there is no oscillator or filter panning available.

The oscillators are packing a nice selection of analog style waveforms, covering the usual suspects such as sine, triangle, saw, square and pulse waves, along with nine different combinations of saw and various pulse stages. The selection of static digital waveforms is also pretty good, with lots of bell-like, organ-ish and FM style sounds. While oscillator level frequency modulation isn’t implemented in the MiniNova engine, the LFOs are reasonably fast and capable of modulating both the pitch and phase of static waveforms. When loaded with wavetables, however, the phase modulation is replaced with the wavetable index scanning. The smoothness of the transition between the steps is controlled via the interpolation parameter. Finally, there is a “hard” setting that acts as a low-pass filter on oscillator level. Not the most marketable feature out there, but it goes to show that Novation really tried to put as much sound sculpting power as possible at your fingertips.

Ring modulation is obtained by multiplying oscillators 1-3 and 2-3 respectively. The two ring modulation outputs have separate channels in the mixer section, so you don’t need to sacrifice any oscillators in order to use them. In total there are seven channels in the mixer section, with noise occupying the last channel. An understated but welcomed feature here is the noise type control, which gives you a choice between unfiltered white noise and three different types of filtered noise. This is extremely useful in various situations. For example, when creating a bass sound which involves noise, selecting high passed white noise allows you to add grit to the sound without introducing unwanted rumble in the low end.

Finally, an oscillator can pass external audio through the single stereo input jack, with the option to pull audio from the left or right channels. Things can get rather wild when the synthesizer’s output is patched back into its input, especially since Audio In can be used as a ring modulation source!

The MiniNova has two filters on offer, each with a variety of filter types to choose from and separate filter drive controls. The drive module is located before the filter in the signal chain and it includes two modes of distortion and bit crushing. Each filter offers the Q normalization feature which changes the filter’s character, although this is mostly noticeable at higher resonance settings. There are five routing options available for serial and parallel configurations. The software editor features a set of block diagrams which offer helpful visual overview of the available routing options.

The envelopes are quite solid in terms of features, offering curve control and the ability to loop the envelope. In addition, the envelope’s decay parameter can be modulated and the envelope itself can be triggered by an Animate button.

Speaking of modulation, the MiniNova offers 20 modulation slots with up to two sources per slot and 50 modulation destinations, including the effects modules and even the modulation slots themselves. The available modulation sources include three LFOs, six envelopes and even an audio envelope. When you factor in the Animate buttons, which can trigger the envelopes or complete a modulation circuit, it becomes obvious that there’s a whole lot of room for creativity here.

The synth features five FX slots which can be populated with compressors, distortion, a comprehensive trance gate, EQ, delay, reverb and chorus/phaser modules. There is also a dedicated auto-pan effect, which is always available and does not use an effect slot. A number of different routing options are available, allowing the user to utilize the effects as sends or inserts.

The FX chain also features a feedback section, routing the output of the effects channel back into its input. This feature can be used for a variety of effects, such as creating those crunchy tape style delays. It would have been nice to have filters in the delay module, or even a filter as a separate effect module for that matter. The flexible EQ does help to bridge this gap, although it’s a bit of a sacrifice as you can only use one instance of the EQ in the FX chain.

The MiniNova also features a vocoder section, a vocal auto-tune effect and a chord player function. You can patch the auto-tune output into the vocoder, so you can correct yourself before you wreck yourself, in a way. The auto-tune is great for achieving the robotic tuning effects that you hear all over modern pop records. It’s also possible to use the vocoder as a filter-bank, processing the synth without a voice input. Since the vocoder parameters can be modulated, I was able to create some very clean metallic bell sounds with it, as well as to add dissonant morphing noises to pads. Even if vocoders on voice aren’t your thing, the vocoder in MiniNova can still be used as a great sound design tool.

The chord function is pretty straightforward, but you do need to access it from the menu. I would have preferred a front panel shortcut for this. The neat thing is that the chord function can be used in conjunction with the arpeggiator.

Finally, the arpeggiator is well featured, offering gate time and swing controls, as well as direct control over which steps in the arpeggiator pattern are active.

The Software Editor (VST/AU)

I had a slightly rocky start with the editor software. The first time I used it, the MiniNova would become unresponsive in some situations and the only way I could fix it was to restart my DAW. I must stress, though, that this only happened the first time I used it and the behavior never repeated itself in my subsequent usage of the editor. It’s actually been rock solid ever since.

Novation provides a lot of support material on their website for getting up and running with the editor. I watched their videos on how to setup the VST plugin and the process was indeed very easy. The editor itself is quite attractive in terms of design, although some might find the GUI size a bit too small. In my opinion, a re-sizable user interface would be a better fit for modern large resolution computer screens. Having said that, I suspect that most people will find it quite acceptable in its current state.

The excellent MiniNova software editor.

The editor is divided up into a master column on the left and an array of editing pages on the right. While having to flick back and forth through different sections can slow down patch programming, it does make sense here as having everything on a single page would cause insane amounts of clutter.

The display section on the left column of the GUI provides an overview of the patch settings. This is really helpful, but I wish this area could also be used to make edits, as it would definitely speed up the patch programming workflow that way.

It would be nice to have a more powerful preset browser. At the moment, users can only scroll through presets with up and down buttons in the software editor, one at a time. Even a drop-down menu would have been welcome. This problem is easily solved with the included librarian software, but I still would have preferred an internal browser page.

In Use

As you’ve probably noticed from the specs, MiniNova is a very powerful synthesizer. The oscillator section alone offers a lot of sonic variety, especially when the two ring modulators come into play. The filters sound great and the Q-normalization is an unassuming little feature that hugely extends the instrument’s versatility. Between the digital waveforms, the two filters, the extensive effects section and massive modulation capabilities, I was easily able to create rich pads reminiscent of the classic digital workstations of the past, as well as modular style effects and many other sounds in-between.

When it comes to pure analog style sounds, I couldn’t put the MiniNova in the camp of some of the best soft-synth analog emulations out there, such as the synths from GForce Software, as well as U-He Diva and Native Instruments Monark. Real analog monosynths are quite affordable these days, so if it’s analog that you want in a synthesizer, I really think that you’d be better off with one of those (or maybe even a Novation Bass Station II?). Overall, I’d characterize the sound of the MiniNova as rich and versatile. For what it’s worth, the sound is more on the digital side of things than real analog. Also, I haven’t noticed stepping in any of the controls, which is great.

I think that the effects are quite good, especially the phaser and chorus, with my only complaint being the reverb. The reverb is not bad per-se, but it is somewhat “ringy” and it could definitely sound better. Although the effects normally don’t matter so much in hardware synthesizers, as you can add your own favorite effects further down the signal chain, the FX section in MiniNova is well integrated into the synth engine itself and is thus as much a part of the sound design process as anything else. The inclusion of a more lush sounding reverb, especially one with pitch shifting capabilities like Valhalla’s Shimmer, along with an extra filter for the effects section, would open up an entirely new world of sound design here. It’s always possible to want more of course, and again, considering the price of the MiniNova, there are quite a lot of features packed in there already.

More Info

Most people who use synthesizers are aware of the concept of free running phase vs fixed phase, also called phase reset or re-trig. Simply put, the tone you hear from an oscillator is made up of cycles of a waveform, whereas the shape of the waveform defines the timbre that you hear.

The position of the wave in this cycle is called the phase and is measured in degrees, from 0˚ to 360˚. While operating in free running mode, the key press and the phase of the waveform are not in sync, so you will most likely hear the waveform at a different stage of its cycle each time you press a key.

When oscillators are “re-triggered” or in “fixed phase” mode, the phase of the waveform will be synced to your key press, and will start from the same pre-defined position every time you press a key. This allows for a consistent transient which is usually important for bass and percussive sounds.

The settings available on the MiniNova are: phase reset, any value between 0˚ and 360˚, and finally “free”. In reality, the 0˚ setting yields the free running mode, whereas all the other settings result in fixed phase behavior. In short, the phase reset parameter is the wrong way around! After discussing this issue with Novation, it turned out to be a bug. Fortunately, the initialize patches in bank C default to 0˚ phase, which is in fact the free running mode, and I do believe that free running phase is what most people expect as a starting point.

I’ve seen people commenting in forums specifically about this problem, but I’ve never seen anyone explain that the phase labeling on the MiniNova is in reverse. I’m guessing that this is true with the UltraNova as well.

Conclusion

Despite its small size and affordable price, the MiniNova is one serious synth. It is quite rare to find something with such a deep architecture in this price range. The instrument’s Animate controls are, to the best of my knowledge, unique.

The computer integration is also a huge highlight, (especially since it actually works!) and sets the MiniNova apart from its competition. For those looking for a hardware synth to perform just one part in a live setup, the MiniNova undoubtedly has a lot to offer. I feel that things are a little bit trickier for studio use, though. While I do love the sound of the MiniNova, my soft-synths don’t limit me to one instance and typically have stereo engines and offer greater polyphony. On the other hand, it’s so much nicer to have a self contained hardware synth to work with, as it bridges the gap between the user and the sound engine.

Overall, the MiniNova is definitely worthy of consideration if you want an affordable yet powerful new synthesizer with expressive performance controls.

More info: Novation MiniNova (official product page)