I recommend the Peak, I absolutely love it, I am having so much fun with it, really deep, there is so much you can do. The interface is wonderful, and it sounds huge…
Novation is honestly the best company I ever interacted with. Their support is great, the site and softwares are easy to use, and the synth’s build quality is excellent.
(It has been in my studio since 2017, so I had enough time with it to develop an opinion)
IMO this is not the strength of affordable polysynths.
Many monosynths allow quite a couple of mod sources at an affordable price, which is their strength to generate many unique sounds and being very versatile .
If this is ported to polyphony, we see price targets like for the Moog One.
Example: Great sounding polysynths like the OB-6, or Prophet-6 are significantly less complex, compared to monosynths of much lower cost like a MatrixBrute.
Maybe a Novation Peak could fill the bill, or the new poly from MFB.
Virus TI is by far the most versatile poly. 16 parts, per part FX, 4 envs, 3 lfos, wavetables, granular, formant, list goes on. Comes at the cost of a little bit of menu diving (edit button for each section, so not too bad).
If you can only have 1, the TI covers a whole lot of ground. Other options I’d consider are a Nord rack (more limited but very hands on) or Novation Nova (can be found very cheaply).
I wouldn’t bother getting anything that isn’t multitimbral if you plan to use it as your only poly.
For doing polyfony in a eurorack, polyend and doepfer have released some interesting modules recently
for desktop analogue extenders your options are
a behringer deepmind - best bang for the buck, though a bit of menu diving and for me the vanilla sound needs to be beefed up with fx to sound good
novation peak - very versatile and good sounding
sequential prophet rev 2, ob6 or prophet 06 - many knobs, great built quality and sound, just pick the one with the filters you like best.
Nord lead A1 desktop new or Nord Lead 2x used
Peak will meet all your requirements perfectly! And is available right now.
It’s prettty difficult to gain an idea of sounds of polysyths online, with everyone doing ambient stuff with 30 seconds or reverb over everything or ‘classic’ synth sounds, none of which interest me.
I thought the idea of a synthesizer was to come up with new sounds. That’s one thing I do love about Eurorack - actual progress of sound instead of constantly rehashing the same old stuff.
I wish they’d just make a knobby (or knobbier) compact desktop Blofeld without a keyboard and analogue filters etc.
Nothing I’ve heard has sparked any interest. I’ll wait for the MFB 8 voice and see what that’s like I think.
Cheers.
Tasty Chips GR-1?
I don’t have one but I’m finding it interesting judging by the online demos.
I find myself looking at the moog one at least once a week even knowing I could never justify dropping the best part of 8 large on a synth
Hmm. That’s actually an excellent suggestion. Thanks!
Very cool as I can just sample my modular and make it polyphonic and change the sound with it. Extremely interesting. The hardware design isn’t exactly to my taste but I think that’s less important.
If you love the blofeld, you can just hook a nice midi controller to it. Check the faderfox PC12 for instance. It should give you a near one knob per function interface.
Yeah I have the PC12, nowhere near as good as having a proper knobby interface though.
I know it has a keyboard but that UDO Super 6 looks and sounds freaking amazing.
MFB Synth 8 is top on my list! Super 6 if I wanted a keyboard.
Stereoping Qfeld is very nice too.
Really ? Im thinking about buying a PC12 myself, thinking it would be almost like having 1 knob per function interface. Why do you think it is not that good ? Lack of visual feedback ?
Nord 2x , 3 , 4 , A1 , modular rack / desktop.
ive got nord 4r (had a 2x) , sounds great , 4 part multitimbral , nice fx , multiple outs. lots of notes , its red. lots of knobs , buttons , well built , seem to hold their value too.
virus modules are nice too.
Sorry I meant the PC4. Even so I think it’d be a similar issue - it’s just a sea of identical knobs.
Perhaps you could change some knob caps for some kind of visual cue I suppose.
The 30 stored setups and more particularly 30 stored shortcuts is very nice. for quickly moving around.
Another vote for the Peak. I’m hoping to pick up a DeepMind soon and from what I’ve read and heard is sound like a sweet poly. And around half the price of the peak if that’s an issue. Maybe other folks have both and can make a comparison?