Back when analogue synths were well out of fashion, Novation was breaking the mould with its original two-octave, preset-free Bass Station (1993), which found its way into many home and pro studios.

Following on from the keyboard version came the very popular rackmount, with preset storage and the same fat analogue sound. It feels crazy that it took Novation 20 years to come up with the follow-up Bass Station 2, but during that time it brought many other great digital synths to the table too, including the popular and versatile Nova series instruments.

What we haven’t seen until now is Novation building on both its digital and analogue heritage, and so today we welcome its new hybrid flagship synth, Peak.

Designed in consultation with Chris Hugget (Chris designed the legendary OSCar and collaborated on several other Novation synths), Peak is Novation’s current flagship synth – and also its most expensive at £1,249.

Currently in desktop form only, Peak certainly feels like a high-end product with its super-tight rubberised knobs, good-quality faders (though there is some wobble), reassuringly clicky buttons, weighty metal case with wooden sides, and clear, easy to read OLED screen with adjustable brightness.

There’s also a lovely looking stand available for £99, which places Peak in a very handy upright position, though unfortunately Peak’s not rackmountable (it would actually fit nicely in a rack with rack ears but then the outputs are in the wrong place). Whilst Peak is heavy for a desktop synth, it’s still transportable, though it’s pretty wide. Currently there is no official Peak bag but we’re guessing that’s on the cards as no doubt a lot of folks will want to take Peak out to gigs or studio sessions.

We do have a couple of further minor criticisms as far as the hardware goes. Firstly, it uses a wall wart, and whilst we don’t really mind this, (though a proper IEC connector would have been better), there is no hook to secure the power lead to the hardware.

Secondly, there are a lot of controls onboard in a small space and it’s sometimes hard to read the panel. We feel that a few different colours would have defined the main areas a little better and made navigation easier.

Having said this, the panel is largely intuitive, with all the main controls right under your fingers, and deeper parameter editing is done via the simple menus. The screen is also easy to read and navigate, helped by the data entry dial to the right, page buttons underneath and three row selector buttons on the left.

Peak is an 8-voice polyphonic, 24 ‘Oxford’ oscillator, monotimbral synthesizer, utilising extremely high resolution anti-aliasing digital oscillators (NCOs) along with wavetables as its main sound sources. Each of the three oscillators onboard offers up the expected analogue-style waveforms (the saw has a density mode, effectively giving you a ‘supersaw’ mode), plus 17 wavetables giving a vast range of tonal possibilities.