I bought a hydrasynth keyboard version some months ago. Its a great piece of equipment and serves both a the main sound-engine for my tracks as well as being the master keyboard controller for all vsts. MPE and poly aftertouch definitely win over the peak. In total, I got 49 keys full poly at, modwheel, exp pedal and the cool ribbon- that's 4 independent modulators right under your hands and feet. ;-) Greetings from Vienna!
Yeah I sort of regret not having the keyboard version of the hydrasynth -- everyone seems to love it. But I live in a small NYC apartment so I had to make some sacrifices.
Not only is this the best video I’ve seen in each of these Synths individuals, but absolutely the vest comparison. I knew my ears were telling me from the other demos I have seen that the peak just sounds so much more musical and alive. Not that the hydra can’t, just that it seems to take a lot more steps to get it there. Peak will definitely be the move for me, though my wallet wishes it wasn’t so.
Thanks man. I'm considering one of both to be my next purchase. Leaning towards the Peak, since I like its sounds just a bit more. I subscribed to stay connected :)
Like many people here im considering one of these two options, have to be honest im leaning towards the Peaks because of its more physical controls since i prefer knob per function rather than the tree format of the hydra, but ill admit to me the hydra synth has more sound design capablities like FM and more advanced wavetables than the Peaks and also a better price, but that doesnt beat the analogyness and just pure synthness of the Peaks
I wish people would read the manuals before posting reviews with misinformation in this. Around 12:30 you say that “warm mode” is the only way to emulate analogness in the Hydra. In fact, you can achieve oscillator drift as well as de-syncing the oscillators. Check into the “Analog Feel”, “Random Phase” and “Warm Mode” Voice Parameters. Paired with the right filter emulation, the Hydra can accurately and convincingly emulate a vintage VCO synth.
Why don't you demonstrate it in a video and cover areas where you feel this youtuber fails at demoing? I appreciate all demo videos because there's always something to learn. Ultimately, I will contrast and compare videos, further my research, and come to my own conclusions. Let's us know when you upload your own demonstration video. We will be waiting.
@@gravyguns I literally listed the oscillator options available. They’re in the manual as well. Maybe someday I will make a video since they are such underrepresented options, but it won’t be because some snarky commented challenged me to. 🤷♂️🙄
I have both and get great sound out of both. I use the Analog Fl under Voice mode which is analogous to Diverge and drift in the Peak. The Hydra has a much broader palette though. It has dual multi mode filters and even has a vowel filter. The Hydra synth also has more envelopes and multiple effects stages. The poly touch on the keyboard version is utterly amazing as well. If I had to key one out of the 2, it would by the Hydra.
Yeah I've heard great things about the keyboard version. Weirdly I did the opposite and upgraded peak to a summit. But I can't blame you and for sure the non-poly aftertouch on the Summit leaves a lot to be desired. I do really like having 61 keys though. Maybe one day I'll upgrade the hydra too. But money and space are two real things, hah.
@@keithgould9134 I'm contemplating selling my Peak and getting a Summit mostly for the new filter. I'm also not a fan of modules. Giving that the Peak/Summit respond to Poly Aftertouch, I think it's a real shame the Summit doesn't transmit it.
@@dopevernacular2925 I wouldn't solely buy it for the new filter. It's very cool, and I've used it on some new patches, but it's not super intuitive to use. If you're going to get the summit, I think you should really love the peak and also be equally interested in more voices / the dual, layer, and split modes. When they introduced the new filter I figured it was going to be a genuine dual filter where you could route different amounts from the mixer to filt 1 and filt 2 and modulate them separately, but it's not quite that. I guess my point is if the only reason you are upgrading is the filter, look into it carefully and know exactly what you are buying, as it's pricy unit.
@@keithgould9134 sound advice! It’s a lovely looking synth though :-) The optional stands for the Peak would make it more usable, but I can’t bring myself to remove those beautiful grooved wooden side panels :-)
@@dopevernacular2925 ASM just announced the Hydrasynth Deluxe, a 73 keys version with 16 voices of polyphony and a dual engine for splits and layers, including individual outputs for each part. Even just fact that the 6 octave poly aftertouch keyboard would make a great general purpose midi controller on its own is, at least for me, worth considering. It's supposed to be slightly cheaper than the summit (something around 1800 AFAIK). Even though I cannot afford one at the moment (and won't in the next few months), the 16 voice Hydrasynth has immediately jumped on the 1st place of my wishlist nevertheless (haven't got a Hydra in any version yet).
Thanks for sharing! I think the peak default is reverb after delay so the echoes are reverberating too. On hydrasynth you have them parallel, so the echoes are not reverberating making the end of the sound more dry.
Thanks for watching! Actually peak starts off with the fx in parallel. I would have thought the hydra was sequential like that based on the diagram on the modules section but I’m not sure of that, and if you say it’s not I’m sure you’re probably right. Certainly sounds that way.
Sadly I sold the Deepmind 12 so I could get a Moog Sub 25. But here's my basic thoughts. The deepmind 12 has a great keyboard / midi controller with a good arpeggiator. The modulation matrix is one of the easiest to use I've seen -- props to them on that. The deepmind 12 has that roland juno style architecture so it's really good for certain sounds and the square wave PWM on it is kind of second to none -- not something you can totally reproduce with a novation peak / summit. So the deepmind can do synth string sounds better, hands down. The envelopes curves are adjustable on deepmind which is cool. The FX unit on the deepmind is kinda nice, but it's a bit complex to use and personally not my favorite. In general though, the peak / summit is just a much better synth. The voices sound so much better, you aren't limited by the juno architecture, you have fm, you have wavetables. Each voice on the peak / summit sounds like 3 voices on the deepmind stacked. Combined with the super immediate and excellent sounding FX on the peak / summit and the sound quality just feels like it's on another level. Both great synths though. Both worth owning. (Love the moog sub 25 though, glad i swapped for that)
@@keithgould9134 Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. What you have said really rings true. I have a decent amount of hands on experience with the DM12 but very little with the Peak, mostly I only know the comparison by watching an listening to other people's demos. Still, I get the impression that the Peak sounds better, and has better effects, and a more interesting synth architecture, and even though it might be deeper in some ways, I feel it might still be easier to program, at least for how I work. I really enjoyed the DM12, and honestly if pressed and had to save money I could happily get a used DM6 and it would add a lot of color and texture to my current setup. Having had a DM12 for a few weeks at a time in my home studio, recorded, and heard it played back at full volume, I can say it's a real synth with it's own thing going on, but everytime I hear the Summit or Peak, my ears just sort of perk up a little bit more. Knowing that nothing really sounds as good over youtube it leaves me quite intrigued to get my hands on the Peak to experience it in person.
The Peak/Summit's LFOs are faster than the Hydra's and go up to 1.6 kHz! Also, the former uses FPGA and therefore is barely prone to aliasing. The Hydra is very prone to aliasing, at least when using the sync mutant.
The prices are obviously not one to one, double on the Peak thus you can't really compare them. In fact, you can get the 73 PAT ASM H-Deluxe now $300 off for less than the Peak.
Thank you very much for the beautiful work! Could you explain better what you did in the DeepMind to integrate the two modules? Is it easy to set up separate midi channel chains for some modules in DM and mix them, or just selecting one at a time? I also wonder how well DM's aftertouch can make good use of hydrasynth's amazing features in place of the pads in this hack version. If it can, it could be one of ASM's best controllers.
Oh man.... I wnat 2 of those 3 (peak, HS and DM) and cant make my mind up WHICH 2 lol. Have Peak and DM module at present but keep thinking of replacing one with Hydrasynth.....
As of now Peak is twice as much as Hydra , for what you get Hydra is miles ahead of Peak. Peak is perhaps more intuitive with knobs in a live situation.
You get "more" with the hydra but it's old technology and doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the peak. It sounds weak and lacks character, like a VST. The Peak is new FPGA technology with analogue effects and sounds incredible, the Hydra will never sound as good. I got the Peak and a few days later, I sold the Peak and got the Summit, which is incredible, has dual filters, 2 Peak sound engines etc.
@@keithgould9134 NP, there's a few shortcuts like that to make patch building alot faster. The "INIT" button works like that to clear individual modules aswell
@@keithgould9134 I have owned the Peak for 2 years - bought the Hydrasynth this summer and it didn't last two months. Just never sounded good, even though I liked the interface.
I miss the use of about everything the Hydrasynth has to offer (wavetables, modulations). Now If you compare patches using only 2 oscillators, Filter, Enveloppe, Chorus, Reverb, Delay, the Peak Sounds better.
Yeah I agree 100%. This really is in no way a fair comparison and I guess the title is a bit clickbait-y. I guess the message here is that when I'm just trying to enjoy the basics of synthesis, the Peak is a more enjoyable experience. So I'm more drawn to it when I don't have a very specific idea in mind.
Thanks! The deepmind supports AT, but not poly. I'm not a huge AT person, but I can't imagine the Deepmind's AT is the best that the synth world has to offer. From what I hear I think the Poly AT on the hydra 49 key is probably worlds better. Maybe I'd get into it if I tried it that way! But I wanted something cheaper and smaller.
@@claudekaber609 As for filters, envelopes I'm not sure I agree. But the effects section on the peak is clearly a lot better, infact I would even go as far as claim that the effects on the hydra are quite bad.
@@FluffyAnvil I don't think they're bad per se. I actually think they are quite solid. Next to the peak they seem weak, but the peak's effects are excellent. The hydra's effects just take a lot more work to make them shine. The default settings are not ideal, and the "sweet spots" are narrow. To be fair, there are some cool effects on the hydra that the peak does not have. This kind of wraps into the whole point I'm trying to make here. The Hydra can sound great and do things that many synths just straight up can't do -- but it's more work to get there.
Excellent comparison! Peak sounds so much more alive in your programming comparison.
I was planning to get a Hydrasynth, but now I’m liking the Peak more.
I bought a hydrasynth keyboard version some months ago. Its a great piece of equipment and serves both a the main sound-engine for my tracks as well as being the master keyboard controller for all vsts. MPE and poly aftertouch definitely win over the peak. In total, I got 49 keys full poly at, modwheel, exp pedal and the cool ribbon- that's 4 independent modulators right under your hands and feet. ;-)
Greetings from Vienna!
Yeah I sort of regret not having the keyboard version of the hydrasynth -- everyone seems to love it. But I live in a small NYC apartment so I had to make some sacrifices.
on same-ish patches peak sounds much more interesting
thanks for the demo :)
Not only is this the best video I’ve seen in each of these Synths individuals, but absolutely the vest comparison. I knew my ears were telling me from the other demos I have seen that the peak just sounds so much more musical and alive. Not that the hydra can’t, just that it seems to take a lot more steps to get it there. Peak will definitely be the move for me, though my wallet wishes it wasn’t so.
Thanks man.
I'm considering one of both to be my next purchase.
Leaning towards the Peak, since I like its sounds just a bit more.
I subscribed to stay connected :)
Like many people here im considering one of these two options, have to be honest im leaning towards the Peaks because of its more physical controls since i prefer knob per function rather than the tree format of the hydra, but ill admit to me the hydra synth has more sound design capablities like FM and more advanced wavetables than the Peaks and also a better price, but that doesnt beat the analogyness and just pure synthness of the Peaks
Um, the Hydrasynth only allows for 8 waveforms to be morphed between. The Peak's wavetables are more advanced, and you can make your own for it.
And you have oscillator and filter FM on the peak!
Thanks for this comparison it's very helpful.
Glad it helped!
I wish people would read the manuals before posting reviews with misinformation in this. Around 12:30 you say that “warm mode” is the only way to emulate analogness in the Hydra. In fact, you can achieve oscillator drift as well as de-syncing the oscillators. Check into the “Analog Feel”, “Random Phase” and “Warm Mode” Voice Parameters. Paired with the right filter emulation, the Hydra can accurately and convincingly emulate a vintage VCO synth.
Why don't you demonstrate it in a video and cover areas where you feel this youtuber fails at demoing? I appreciate all demo videos because there's always something to learn. Ultimately, I will contrast and compare videos, further my research, and come to my own conclusions. Let's us know when you upload your own demonstration video. We will be waiting.
@@gravyguns I literally listed the oscillator options available. They’re in the manual as well. Maybe someday I will make a video since they are such underrepresented options, but it won’t be because some snarky commented challenged me to. 🤷♂️🙄
@@MichaelBlueMusic
Thats a laugh considering your very snarky comment!!
Well for one you can absolutely do oscillator drift and more on the hydra... it's called AnalogFL under the voice section.
Yeah my coworker informed me of this just after I posted the video. 😅
I have both and get great sound out of both. I use the Analog Fl under Voice mode which is analogous to Diverge and drift in the Peak. The Hydra has a much broader palette though. It has dual multi mode filters and even has a vowel filter. The Hydra synth also has more envelopes and multiple effects stages. The poly touch on the keyboard version is utterly amazing as well. If I had to key one out of the 2, it would by the Hydra.
Yeah I've heard great things about the keyboard version. Weirdly I did the opposite and upgraded peak to a summit. But I can't blame you and for sure the non-poly aftertouch on the Summit leaves a lot to be desired. I do really like having 61 keys though. Maybe one day I'll upgrade the hydra too. But money and space are two real things, hah.
@@keithgould9134 I'm contemplating selling my Peak and getting a Summit mostly for the new filter. I'm also not a fan of modules. Giving that the Peak/Summit respond to Poly Aftertouch, I think it's a real shame the Summit doesn't transmit it.
@@dopevernacular2925 I wouldn't solely buy it for the new filter. It's very cool, and I've used it on some new patches, but it's not super intuitive to use. If you're going to get the summit, I think you should really love the peak and also be equally interested in more voices / the dual, layer, and split modes. When they introduced the new filter I figured it was going to be a genuine dual filter where you could route different amounts from the mixer to filt 1 and filt 2 and modulate them separately, but it's not quite that. I guess my point is if the only reason you are upgrading is the filter, look into it carefully and know exactly what you are buying, as it's pricy unit.
@@keithgould9134 sound advice! It’s a lovely looking synth though :-)
The optional stands for the Peak would make it more usable, but I can’t bring myself to remove those beautiful grooved wooden side panels :-)
@@dopevernacular2925 ASM just announced the Hydrasynth Deluxe, a 73 keys version with 16 voices of polyphony and a dual engine for splits and layers, including individual outputs for each part.
Even just fact that the 6 octave poly aftertouch keyboard would make a great general purpose midi controller on its own is, at least for me, worth considering. It's supposed to be slightly cheaper than the summit (something around 1800 AFAIK).
Even though I cannot afford one at the moment (and won't in the next few months), the 16 voice Hydrasynth has immediately jumped on the 1st place of my wishlist nevertheless (haven't got a Hydra in any version yet).
Thanks for sharing! I think the peak default is reverb after delay so the echoes are reverberating too. On hydrasynth you have them parallel, so the echoes are not reverberating making the end of the sound more dry.
Thanks for watching! Actually peak starts off with the fx in parallel. I would have thought the hydra was sequential like that based on the diagram on the modules section but I’m not sure of that, and if you say it’s not I’m sure you’re probably right. Certainly sounds that way.
With the peak you can choose routing fonction on the FX section
Great comparison. I'd love to see you do a comparison between the Peak and the Deemmind 12.
Sadly I sold the Deepmind 12 so I could get a Moog Sub 25. But here's my basic thoughts. The deepmind 12 has a great keyboard / midi controller with a good arpeggiator. The modulation matrix is one of the easiest to use I've seen -- props to them on that. The deepmind 12 has that roland juno style architecture so it's really good for certain sounds and the square wave PWM on it is kind of second to none -- not something you can totally reproduce with a novation peak / summit. So the deepmind can do synth string sounds better, hands down. The envelopes curves are adjustable on deepmind which is cool. The FX unit on the deepmind is kinda nice, but it's a bit complex to use and personally not my favorite. In general though, the peak / summit is just a much better synth. The voices sound so much better, you aren't limited by the juno architecture, you have fm, you have wavetables. Each voice on the peak / summit sounds like 3 voices on the deepmind stacked. Combined with the super immediate and excellent sounding FX on the peak / summit and the sound quality just feels like it's on another level. Both great synths though. Both worth owning. (Love the moog sub 25 though, glad i swapped for that)
@@keithgould9134 Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. What you have said really rings true. I have a decent amount of hands on experience with the DM12 but very little with the Peak, mostly I only know the comparison by watching an listening to other people's demos. Still, I get the impression that the Peak sounds better, and has better effects, and a more interesting synth architecture, and even though it might be deeper in some ways, I feel it might still be easier to program, at least for how I work. I really enjoyed the DM12, and honestly if pressed and had to save money I could happily get a used DM6 and it would add a lot of color and texture to my current setup. Having had a DM12 for a few weeks at a time in my home studio, recorded, and heard it played back at full volume, I can say it's a real synth with it's own thing going on, but everytime I hear the Summit or Peak, my ears just sort of perk up a little bit more. Knowing that nothing really sounds as good over youtube it leaves me quite intrigued to get my hands on the Peak to experience it in person.
IMHO the main weakness of the deepmind is the filter that cut the low frequencies too much. Plus the lack of waveforms.
The Peak/Summit's LFOs are faster than the Hydra's and go up to 1.6 kHz! Also, the former uses FPGA and therefore is barely prone to aliasing. The Hydra is very prone to aliasing, at least when using the sync mutant.
The prices are obviously not one to one, double on the Peak thus you can't really compare them. In fact, you can get the 73 PAT ASM H-Deluxe now $300 off for less than the Peak.
Thank you very much for the beautiful work! Could you explain better what you did in the DeepMind to integrate the two modules?
Is it easy to set up separate midi channel chains for some modules in DM and mix them, or just selecting one at a time?
I also wonder how well DM's aftertouch can make good use of hydrasynth's amazing features in place of the pads in this hack version. If it can, it could be one of ASM's best controllers.
Much prefer the hydrasynth
Oh man.... I wnat 2 of those 3 (peak, HS and DM) and cant make my mind up WHICH 2 lol. Have Peak and DM module at present but keep thinking of replacing one with Hydrasynth.....
As of now Peak is twice as much as Hydra , for what you get Hydra is miles ahead of Peak.
Peak is perhaps more intuitive with knobs in a live situation.
You get "more" with the hydra but it's old technology and doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the peak. It sounds weak and lacks character, like a VST. The Peak is new FPGA technology with analogue effects and sounds incredible, the Hydra will never sound as good. I got the Peak and a few days later, I sold the Peak and got the Summit, which is incredible, has dual filters, 2 Peak sound engines etc.
Which one are you referring to in the description? I am really struggling trying to decide which one I should buy! Thanks for this video!
Sorry for such a slow reply. I personally like the peak better. But theyre both great.
@14:00 if you hold "save" you can copy and paste envelopes, LFOs, Oscillators and mutants
Wow that will definitely be convenient - thanks!
@@keithgould9134 NP, there's a few shortcuts like that to make patch building alot faster. The "INIT" button works like that to clear individual modules aswell
On wich synth?
@@graphenemusic5922 Hydrasynth
Hydrasynth desktop.
Nic3 synths
The Peak sounds so much better it's not even funny. Hydrasynth has some great tricks up it's sleeve, but always ends up sounding thin and flat .
I think you've made your choice then! :D I've since upgraded to the Summit actually.
@@keithgould9134 I have owned the Peak for 2 years - bought the Hydrasynth this summer and it didn't last two months. Just never sounded good, even though I liked the interface.
I had the same problem. Extremely impressed by the interface, couldn't work with the sound.
Good work! I only miss the use of PolyAT of the Hydrasynth, because the Deepmind keyboard doesn't support that?
I miss the use of about everything the Hydrasynth has to offer (wavetables, modulations). Now If you compare patches using only 2 oscillators, Filter, Enveloppe, Chorus, Reverb, Delay, the Peak Sounds better.
Yeah I agree 100%. This really is in no way a fair comparison and I guess the title is a bit clickbait-y. I guess the message here is that when I'm just trying to enjoy the basics of synthesis, the Peak is a more enjoyable experience. So I'm more drawn to it when I don't have a very specific idea in mind.
Thanks! The deepmind supports AT, but not poly. I'm not a huge AT person, but I can't imagine the Deepmind's AT is the best that the synth world has to offer. From what I hear I think the Poly AT on the hydra 49 key is probably worlds better. Maybe I'd get into it if I tried it that way! But I wanted something cheaper and smaller.
@@claudekaber609 As for filters, envelopes I'm not sure I agree. But the effects section on the peak is clearly a lot better, infact I would even go as far as claim that the effects on the hydra are quite bad.
@@FluffyAnvil I don't think they're bad per se. I actually think they are quite solid. Next to the peak they seem weak, but the peak's effects are excellent. The hydra's effects just take a lot more work to make them shine. The default settings are not ideal, and the "sweet spots" are narrow. To be fair, there are some cool effects on the hydra that the peak does not have. This kind of wraps into the whole point I'm trying to make here. The Hydra can sound great and do things that many synths just straight up can't do -- but it's more work to get there.
Does the Novation Peak have presets? Because I don't like the on Hydrasynth.
It does, but I don't particularly like the ones it comes with. But I've come to realize this is very much a matter of personal preference.