Novation Mininova

An incredible mini synth. Apart from having just amazing default patches, it is just really easy to use and because of the way it is set up it means you can do a lot of changes while playing. Plus having that large cutoff knob is just a great feature

Great functional layout. Amazing sounds!!! Build this exact synth into a 61 key beast and I'll buy it as well! Instant favorite!!

All the right little buttons...

Good, modern bread-and-butter subtractive modelling synth with loads of waveforms, filters and modulation possibilities. Lots of performance controls for live use. Novation also supply sounds for the synth on their website, so you can turn it into a Supernova if you wish. The arpeggiator really brings it to life when you're tweaking. It sounds deep and good for bass. It does organs and electric pianos passably well, but its strength lies in evolving pads, chunky bass, sequenced bleeps and distinctive leads. Not many onboard FX, but lots of routing options. Integrates with your DAW like a plug-in for fast editing too.

Was the king of mini analog emulation but real mini analog is knocking it down the pecking order. the vocoder is still good though.

Well the sound is okey. It has issues in form of strange bugs that took me ages to fix. And build quality isn't superb... So some encoders started jumping and I don´t use it much any longer. Also mini keys aren't optimal for playing...

I've read reviews, heard demos and I was a bit discouraged from buying it because "digital is not as good as analog" but I now have my MiniNova and it is exceeding my expectations, you just need to make the right patch to make it sound analog.

great for starting up! handy little tool very powerful!

As the saying goes Great things come in small pacsges the mininova is one of the best mini synths , though the keys are minuatureits very powerful engine and quality tones jus rip it off . Great for live musicians but if you need a normal sized keys go for the Ultranova otherwise a great pacage all togather ...

Exactly what the titles says. Also It's pretty easy to learn and has some really cool bass sounds I like to use.

Love love love

awesome synth i love it . :)

My main hardware synth. The fact that it can also be used as a midi controller is awesome.

At first I thought it would be a fun toy. It sounds pretty damn great for a VA. So far the Vocoder blows away my Miniak. The MiniNova will be used in my music for sure until I can sell it and the Miniak for a decent true analog synth like Deepmind 6 or DSI Mopho x4.

I thing it is the most powerful and useful synth ah this price.

Good synthesizer , with microphone and vocoder and it is very easy and full .

I was looking for a small synths to use at my gigs. So, I was also eyeing the MicroKorg for quite a while. But I ultimately went with the MiniNova, after reading some comparisons between these two synths in different forums. The bottom line was, that many loved the MicroKorg for it's warmer sound, but the MiniNova comes with a more capable synth engine. Eventually, I bought a mint MiniNova off Craigslist for a great price. All I can say is, that I am impressed with its capabilities. 3 Oscillators, effect chain with 5 slots, Vocoder and much more! The software editor unveils the whole potential, but you have to make sure to install the VST in the correct folder, otherwise your DAW won't ever find it. I noticed, that some keys are not releasing, when I use it with the VST. This issue does not occur, when the Synth not connected to the PC, however. I love, that it has a USB port. When I want to do some sound design, I just grab my laptop, The MiniNova and some headphones. No need for a MIDI interface dangling around. A drawback is the small keyboard, which will take me a while to get used to, I guess. Generally, I have to explore the synth further, to write a more accurate review. But for now i would give it a 4 star.

For its size, this synth is simply great. It can create a vast array of sounds and is perfect for almost any genre. The menus seem a little complicated to start with but are simple once you get used to them. It is great for live performances due to the animate buttons, making it very easy to tweak your sounds on the fly.

Being a fan of virtual synthesizers, my initial fear was that it'd be hard to get used to having a harware-only interface. Fortunately, this synth comes with a digital interface, which helps greatly in getting used to the hardware. This is my go to bass synthesizer, and I'll probably be sticking with it for a while.

Cool synth, lots of presets but not a huge fan of the shared control knobs.

At first I regretted buying this because I couldn't get the VST to work properly- no sound while editing the instrument. Then I found it was a local echo midi thing and all was fine. I still kind of think I shouldn't have bought it because it's essentially a wavetable vst except in a hardware form but without the full ability to edit the sound on the machine itself, and I have serum, massive and z3ta+2 for making sounds on the pc.

In the end though the factory patches are quite fun and it's a useful smallish keyboard to explore ideas with when inspiration strikes. In fact the best thing about the mininova is that it makes a handy compact midi controller for the pc. The novation launchkey 61 turned out to be a bit too big for my pc setup.