Novation MiniNova Analogue Modelling Compact 37 Mini-key Synth – Tough, compact, powerful mini-synth with pitch-correcting effect vocoder, 256 onboard sounds and five effects per voice layering Blue

I bought one of these back around 2014 or so and enjoyed it, it was one of my very many G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) purchases.Fast forward to 2017, I bought a motorcycle and sold off a bunch of my gear to help pay for the bike, the Mini Nova was a piece of gear I tearfully let go of. At the time I mostly just dabbled at synths so I was barely using the Mini Nova.Fast forward to now. After a lot of frustration at trying to sequence music with a DAW, I discovered the fun of sequencing synths in a "DAW-less" setup. I've dug out the few synths I kept, and bought two synthesizers from Modal Electronics. To avoid going on a further tangent, I sent both synths back, and realized I had enough refunded money to get another Mini Nova.I'm not selling this one. When I had my first Mini Nova, I was in awe at it's capabilities, and now that I've spent a lot more time tweaking different types of hardware and software synths, the Mini Nova continues to impress. I won't go into what the synth can do. Head to YouTube and watch some videos if you want a demo of what this little powerhouse can do.My main two reasons for scoring this synth so high are: 1. I find it's controls and workflow intuitive and 2. It sounds great. A lesser reason is this synth is fully polyphonic, and it's price tag puts it in competition with just a few other poly synths and a myriad of monophonic synths.To touch briefly on the Modal Electronics synths... One was a Skulpt. A great sounding synth that is cheaper and seemingly as featured packed as the Mini Nova, with a seemingly intuitive control layout, it frustrated me to no end. All it did was flash it's LEDs at me. I could almost never get the Skulpt's control app for tablet/smartphone to connect to the Skulpt. So all I had for feedback other than listening was blinking LEDs. If I did something wrong on the Skulpt, I had no way of telling what I did. When both the Skulpt and the other synth I had bought, a Craft Synth 2.0, kept crashing, I sent them back.Dealing with those made me appreciate the Mini Nova's controls so much more. The Mini Nova has a screen that shows you numerical values as you turn knobs! Such a simple feature, yet dealing with the ME synths has made me realize how I took it for granted. Furthermore, while some features of the synth, such as LFO's and patching, do require you to menu dive a bit, there's enough knobs to tweak the synth's sound, in both subtle and dramatic ways without needing to look at the screen. The toggle switch to the right of the synth dictates what the four small knobs do, and the text on them is clear enough that I don't have to look at the screen. But having the screen there is so wonderful.Moving on to sound, I'll compare this to one of my old synths, a first generation Korg Minilogue. Great sounding synth, even more hands-on than the Mini Nova. There's one nuance to the Minilogue's tone that makes me glad I've got the Mini Nova back in my arsenal, now that I'm playing synths so much more. Nearly all of the Minilogue's tones have a metallic edge in them. Sometimes that's preferable, so I'm not griping. But when it comes to dialing in a warm, smooth tone, the Mini Nova does so with ease, as well as edgy metallic tones or otherwise.Put simply in another way, until now, the Minilogue was my most tonally versatile synth. The Mini Nova trumps it easily in that department. Oh, and unlike so many other synths, the Mini Nova has an ENTIRE bank of BLANK presets!! I've used numerous digital synths that are fully loaded with presets. If you want to save a tone you dialed up from scratch, you need to delete a preset on said synths. Not so with the MIni Nova! I'm so glad that Novation realized tone tweakers like myself would want to dial in their own tones, while also enjoying some of the preset tones!I would recommend the Mini Nova to synth players of all experience levels. As an absolute beginner myself back when I bought my first Mini Nova, I was still comfortable enough with it to start creating my own tones from scratch on day one. While I've got a lot more experience in synth tweaking now, I still don't use the Mini Nova to it's fully capacity, so as long as one doesn't mind the digital nature of this synth, I'd even recommend this to an experienced synth player. I feel the Mini Nova is very unique with the features I've outlined: Very powerful and flexible, yet friendly and approachable to new synth players. Plus it's hardware feels rock solid. While I understand not many people like the mini keys, I don't mind them and they beat the touch pads found on other synths!

I am just getting started in electronic music creation, and this has been the perfect synth for me. At first I was comparing this keyboard to the UltraNova and wasn't sure which one to get. I really wanted a vocoder (both have this) and they both have the same sound engine, but I was used to the full-size keys of a larger keyboard and I wasn't sure how I would like having to run the sound through a separate USB MIDI input (the UltraNova can just plug in via USB).Ultimately the lower cost of the MiniNova and the great videos I saw on YouTube won me over in favor of the MiniNova. It's been great! I've been using it with Garageband on a Mac - plugged in through a USB MIDI input device I bought years ago, and recording has been very easy. I record it as a "real instrument", not as a MIDI controller. Just make sure your levels are good (not too low and not peaked) and you get a perfect recording.In fact, the smaller size of this keyboard has made recording MUCH easier on my computer, since the MiniNova can sit on my desk right in front of my computer keyboard and not have to sit on some large stand a few feet away. The smaller keys are actually easier to play in some respects because you can jump around much easier. The only time I wish for a larger keyboard (in terms of number of keys) is when I play something classical like Bach, but when I actually go to record my own electronic music this doesn't really apply anyway. There is an easy to use octave control that gives you whatever range you are looking for when needed.The sounds are excellent. I love the vocoder and there are a lot of great synthesizer sounds, both modern and classic. The arpeggio/motion sounds are very good. If anything I could use a few more, but it's an impressive collection overall. Just hearing some of the sounds and playing around with them is inspiring for the kind of music you can create.I've been sticking to mostly the "stock" sounds without having to do much tweaking with the onboard controls, but as I play around with those I can see the power that is available for tweaking on the fly. They are easy to use. I would say the only "problem" I have had (and I wouldn't say it's a true problem), is that if I do go crazy with some tweaking of sounds, sometimes it seems I lose the original "stock" sound, but a quick reset of the synth (turn it off and back on) brings it back to normal. Maybe a reset button would be useful, but it's not a big deal to get around it.The controls on the MiniNova also seem a bit easier than the UltraNova. When I tried out the UltraNova in a local music store, it took the sales guy (and me) about half an hour to get the vocoder to work. Much simpler on the MiniNova - just turn the dial and you get your choices. I also like that the sound tweaking controls are right there in front of you with real controls and not buried in some menu that you have to navigate.Overall an excellent synth that is relatively easy, fun to play, and powerful enough to keep me happy for years to come. Nice job, Novation.