Building upon the success of the Novation Peak synthesizer, the flagship Novation Summit is a two-part multitimbral, 16-voice polyphonic synthesizer with a premium five-octave, semi-weighted keyboard (with velocity and aftertouch); it is well suited for musicians, sound designers, and synthesizer enthusiasts.

Summit effectively puts the power of two Peaks at your fingertips, enabling two completely independent patches to be split or layered across the keyboard, or switched between on the fly. It also expands on Peak’s layout, with many hidden controls and functions made accessible on the front panel including FM routing, LFOs 3 & 4, all arpeggiator parameters, and dedicated pitch and mod wheels. What’s more, the Summit features numerous new filter options, and an audio input for processing external sources with its reverb, chorus, and delay effects.

The instrument features analog-sounding NCOs (numerically controlled oscillators), which include 3 new Oxford oscillators per voice, as well as a flexible digital domain with 43 digital wavetables of 5 waveforms per row. The instrument also features an analog, multimode, state-variable OTA filter with high-pass, band-pass, low-pass, and dual-filter selections with 12/24 dB slopes. The dual filter offers several routing configurations including LP to HP, LP to  BP, HP to BP, LP + HP, LP + BP, HP + BP, LP + LP, BP + BP, and HP + HP. Summit’s sound engine is rounded out by analog distortion, overdrive, and digital effects including chorus, delay, and reverb per part.

At the heart of the synthesizer lies the high-powered processor component called a field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip, which far surpasses traditional DSP chips. Each of Peak’s 16 voices has an independent oversampling digital-to-analog converter (DAC). These DACs are oversampling at over 24 MHz (24 million times per second), using a simple RC (resistor-capacitor) filter on their output in the analog domain. Peak’s ability to generate waveforms at the oversampling frequency (up to 512 times the traditional rate) ensures that Peak’s waveforms are pure at all frequencies and free from digital artifacts, no matter how aggressively the pitch is modulated.

The front panel of the synthesizer provides a variety of controllers for 1:1 control over most of its parameters. There are 50 control knobs, 8 sliders, 1 data encoder, 1 volume knob, 55 function buttons, 2 animate buttons, and a crisp OLED display. What’s more, most of the control knobs, switches, and sliders transmit continuous controller data for recording and playing back automation from your sequencer of choice.

The rear panel offers a 1/4″ headphone output, stereo (left & right) 1/4″ outputs, two auxiliary 1/4″ outputs, two 1/4″ inputs, two 1/4″ pedal inputs, and an 1/8″ CV modulation input for incorporating modular synthesizers. Additionally, the instrument features MIDI In, Out, and Thru via standard 5-pin DIN connectors. The onboard USB port is class compliant and transmits system and MIDI data. The Summit includes a power cord, USB cable, and a download card for Ableton Live Lite 9 and Loopmasters sample content.