UltraNova Synthesizer

UltraNova is the new generation of Novation's iconic Nova range of synthesizers. It packs the massive Nova sound into a compact body with a built-in vocoder. A new "Touch" performance system places deep control of the synth right at your fingertips - incredible new ways to play, create and perform are just a touch away. UltraNova is a single-part synth with features including wavetable synthesis, even more powerful filters, a software editor, and a revolutionary new touch-sense performance mode.

Find your sound-instantly
UltraNova comes with 300 onboard sounds that you can select by type (bass, lead, pad, etc) and musical genre (hip hop, rock, house, etc), so performers and gigging musicians can get started straight away. If you need to find a bass sound for a hip-hop track quickly, select "bass" under "type", and "hip-hop" under "category," and you're ready to go! If you want to tweak the patch you can quickly change the character of the sound with 8 encoders. For more detailed control, there's a large encoder. It also comes with a software patch librarian, which allows you to search for and sort patches by type and genre. Along with the 300 sounds that come with UltraNova, there's space for another 200 of your own patches onboard the hardware.

The Software Editor
UltraNova has a powerful software editor that enables visual editing of all parameters. It can be used within DAWs as a plug-in editor.

The synth engine
With 300 onboard patches you can play and perform with UltraNova right out of the box. But it also has a powerful synth engine derived from a classic big-synth: the Supernova II. UltraNova also has a 12-band vocoder and ships with a dynamic gooseneck microphone. UltraNova is easy to program, since each part of the synth is accessed by a button that brings up all the parameters. Creating huge new sounds is what UltraNova does best: along with 14 conventional waveforms and 36 wavetables, you have a total of 5 effects slots for each sound! UltraNova's density and density-detune function enables you to fatten-up your patches, and the modulation capacity is enormous. The software editor enables detailed visual editing of UltraNova on your Mac or PC.

Vocoder
UltraNova has a 12-band vocoder and ships with a dynamic gooseneck microphone. In addition to putting your voice through the vocoder (via the microphone) you can also process other sounds by putting instruments - or pretty much anything into UltraNova's stereo line inputs on the back panel.

Animate - Touch-sense performance

Shaping and exploring sounds with encoders and buttons is a massive part of being creative with synths. UltraNova has evolved the idea of hands-on sound shaping, allowing you to get deeper and more creative physical control of the synth engine. By pressing Touch in the Animate section, you engage a mode that triggers envelopes and sound-shaping destinations by simply touching any of the touch-sensitive encoders. These destinations could be oscillator pitch, sync, hardness, filter distortion, cutoff, resonance, effects parameters, send levels - to name but a few. (By pressing Tweak you can switch back to conventional rotary control and assign 8 of your most frequently used parameters to the encoders for instant access).

This allows you to access parameters that may otherwise buried deep in the synth's architecture, creating totally new performance options. You can assign these however wish to any of UltraNova's 8 touch sensitive encoders, and you can touch more than one at a time.

USB-Audio Interface
UltraNova has a built in USB-Audio interface which enables you to get sound in and out of your computer in the studio or on the move. There are 2 inputs and 4 separate outputs, which can be routed however you wish. For example you can route audio to an external FX processor, a second pair of monitors or a hard disk recorder. It can also come in useful on stage if for example you need to route backing tracks from your laptop to the main mix separately from the synth, or send a click to the drummer.

UltraNova also has a SPDIF output so you can get digital recordings of UltraNova straight into your DAW. The back panel also contains MIDI in/out/thru ports to connect external MIDI equipment.

You can get control of your plug-in instruments and effects with Novation's Automap software. This converts UltraNova's 8 rotary encoders into software controllers, a large "Speed Dial' encoder gives you instant control over any software parameter that your mouse/cursor is over.

The Patch Librarian
UltraNova also ships with a patch librarian that can be hosted on Mac or PC. This enables the user to save an unlimited number patches to the host computer and organize them into folders. Each of the 300 patches that ship with UltraNova have been tagged to make it easy to search by category and genre from the hardware synth or the software patch librarian.