NOVA Review
Lunacy Audio’s Nova is an instrument ecosystem similar setups like Arcade. Out the gate it comes with five free instruments, and five paid instruments with new instruments being added regularly. Lunacy Audio gave me a preview of Nova and also asked me to make some presets, they also sponsored my video, but did not ask me to write this review. As of this article, I don’t have much to say about the Nova ecosystem its self, but there are some updates in the works that I’m excited about and I’ll cover more thoroughly when they come out.
This review will mainly focus on the paid devices and the current set of freebies.
As a whole system, I think tools like this are pretty neat, you get a variety of simple focused instruments rather than a single do-everything powerhouse. Whether or not you like this difference comes down to your personal workflow. Each instrument is VERY simple, with the freebies being even more stripped down. The UI’s are all pretty lovely, though they don’t quite share a uniform design. Things like modulation systems, included effects, and general layout vary quite a bit from instrument to instrument. This leads to a bit of an inconsistent feel between instruments, but it also lends to more variety. Compare this to some other ecosystems, where they might share the same modulation and effects across instruments. I really like the Gleam, Growl and Silhouettes UIs. They have pleasant shading and texture and almost a “web-design” feel to them.
SWARM
Swarm ventures around a unison based oscillator with a variety of unison modes for different flavors. I liked the fuzzy soft sound of the noise mode, but my favorites was the warp mode which has extreme detuning per unison voice, pushing it into atonal territories. There are also 16 wave shapes to chose from. Swarm also has a cool grain effect for adding even more layers and texture.
DRIFT CASSETTE
Drift Cassette is more of a sample player, it comes with a collection of tapes. Each tape is a multi sampled instrument and you can blend between two tapes at a time. There are nine different effects you can load into six slots. The time effect plays a looped layer that can be pitched up or down. This effect is actually really fun when you pitch the speed up or down by a full octave and set the mix to 50%. I wish more synths came with looping and pitch effects as they add some unique texture.
GLEAM
Gleam is a nice sounding physical modeling synth. It comes with four different materials that can be sculpted with brightness, inharmonicity, and decay. I enjoy the decay “per partial” display. There’s a nice variety of tones from this one all while keeping the design minimal. A sample layer ads a nice touch of percussive texture. The Arp/Ricochet adds a nice rhythmic element. On top of all this, there is a subtle touch of random everywhere, with little corner sliders that adjust the randomness per control.
GROWL
Growl is a monophonic FM beast. It kinda just sounds insane, I’d definitely sample this one rather than trying to play it via midi. The sound is pretty wild to begin with so the FM matrix doesn’t really change things all that much. As well, it is nice to see a multi band distortion here, but I find it just pushes the already extreme sound closer to noise more than anything.
ANIMA
Anima is another FM synth, but with a much more classic synth UI. It provides basic wave shapes, FM, AM, feedback, and warp controls. The effects on this one are pretty basic, but the modulation is quite deep. There’s four XY LFOs and three envelopes. The XY LFOs can record any motion via mouse and lets you use each axis as its own modulation source. I really appreciate that they allow you to smooth the recorded motion as mouse drawn modulation is always a bit rough around the edges.
SILHOUETTES
My favorite of the freebies. Silhouettes has a VERY minimal and dark UI. It comes with five presets and each has an XY macro with a couple additional macros to add motion/ texture. This one has a moody cinematic sound and I particularly enjoy the Ghosts preset.
OTHER FREEBIES
The freebies are VERY simple, three of them share the same UI layout but in different colors, focusing on one sound at a time. I’ll be curious to see how this library expands with time.
As I alluded to earlier, there’s an update in Nova’s future which I am very excited about, I don’t want to reveal too much, but this platform is a bit more than just a vehicle for Lunacy Audio to release new devices through. In the mean time, I’ll try to update this article with each new premium instrument, or at least any that particularly interest me. It’s also worth noting that Nova will work in your browser, so you don’t even need to download anything to play with it, but I will say the browser version is a bit touchier on CPU and performance.