A second life for the UltraNova and the MiniNova

The UltraNova (2010) and the MiniNova (2012) are still on stands and in studios. RealFeel Nova runs their own firmware in software, so we can measure every sound they make, keep it exactly as it is, or clean it up. Then it hands the real synths a set of editors made for how people work today.

The UltraNova's front panel as the emulator draws it: the touch-sensitive encoders along the top, the patch display, the synth edit buttons, 37 keys and the pitch and mod wheels. — UltraNova 2010

The MiniNova's front panel as its emulator draws it: the mic socket, the type and genre dial, the PERFORM section with four knobs, eight pads and 37 mini keys. — MiniNova 2012

Both panels are the emulators' own drawings, not photographs. The maker's logos are left off: this project isn't Novation's.

The UltraNova and the MiniNova

Novation built both around one deep digital engine: three oscillators a voice with 36 wavetables, two filters with drive, six envelopes, three LFOs, a 20-slot modulation matrix, a vocoder and a chain of five effects. The UltraNova put it in a compact keyboard with full-size keys; the MiniNova packed it into something you could carry under one arm, with a gooseneck mic and pads for playing it live.

UltraNova

Arrived: 2010
Keys: 37, full size, with aftertouch
Hands on: Eight touch-sensitive encoders and a filter knob; touch one and the screen shows what it does
Also: A USB audio interface, a vocoder with its own mic input

MiniNova

Arrived: 2012
Keys: 37, mini
Hands on: PERFORM: four knobs over six rows of controls, and eight pads that animate a sound or play an arpeggio
Also: A gooseneck mic for the vocoder and VocalTune

What they got right

A big engine in a small box. Glassy pads, hard basses, wavetable sweeps, all from one patch structure, at a price that put it on a lot of first desks.
A vocoder people actually use. Plug in a mic and it talks; the MiniNova's VocalTune turned that into a sound of its own.
Made to be played. Touch-sensitive encoders on the UltraNova, Animate pads and a PERFORM section on the MiniNova.

Where they show their age

Aliasing. The oscillators and the filter drive generate tones above 22 kHz that fold back into the music. We measured it as close as −6 dB under the notes.
A ringing reverb. A small fixed network of echoes that repeats exactly, so its tails ring like a metal tube.
Voices run out. On a real UltraNova: all 20 voices on a plain patch, 9–10 with three oscillators at full density, filter and drive.
Small windows. A two-line screen and deep menus for a patch with hundreds of settings.
Software from another decade. The original editor was made for the computers of 2010, and Automap, which much of the UltraNova's panel was built around, is no longer supported.

Original and Modern, side by side

The first thing on the list above, made visible. Each picture is a spectrogram: time runs left to right, pitch bottom to top, brightness is level. The curves that climb with the notes are the real harmonics. Everything else is aliasing. Start with a sawtooth gliding up four octaves.

Spectrogram of a sawtooth gliding from C4 to C8 on the original engine: lines fall from the top edge and cross the rising harmonics. — **Drag the line, then press play.** You hear whichever side the playhead is on, so the moment it crosses your line, the Original becomes Modern. The lines falling from the top are aliasing: harmonics that ran past 22 kHz and folded back into the music, out of tune and moving the wrong way.

The same glide on the Modern engine: only the rising harmonics. — **Drag the line, then press play.** You hear whichever side the playhead is on, so the moment it crosses your line, the Original becomes Modern. The lines falling from the top are aliasing: harmonics that ran past 22 kHz and folded back into the music, out of tune and moving the wrong way.

Five more sounds

Wavetable, glide C4 to C8

Aliasing against the harmonics−9 dB−85 dB

The worst case on the synth. The wavetable oscillator runs at half the sample rate, so a mirror image folds around 11 kHz: the X across the middle. The steps where upper harmonics stop are the firmware choosing darker tables as the pitch rises; Modern makes that visible rather than causing it.

How Modern works

It reads the synth's own wavetables with the same weights and phases, at four times the sample rate (eight for the drive), and filters back down before anything reaches your ears. Below 20 kHz the tone is the original's; what's gone is what never belonged to the note.

What it doesn't touch

Original stays the default, and it's checked bit for bit against the firmware after every change. Modern is a switch you choose, and it doesn't cost a single voice. It runs in the emulator: the synth's own DSP has no room for it.

Running the synths' own firmware

Novation shipped operating-system updates for both synths as files you send to them over MIDI. Inside is everything the synth is: the program for its main processor, and the code for its DSP, the whole sound engine. Nothing had to be read out of a chip.

Decode

The update's container, cracked open: all 291 of its block checksums verify, and packing it again reproduces Novation's file byte for byte.
Emulate

The chips identified and emulated: a Renesas H8S/2357 and a Freescale DSP56367 in the UltraNova, a Cortex-M3 and a Symphony DSP in the MiniNova. The firmware runs on them unchanged, about four times faster than real time.
Prove

Factory patches rendered and checked after every change: the Original sound stays bit for bit what the firmware makes. That check is why anything else can be trusted.
Improve

Only then: the oscillators and drive rebuilt to run cleanly, the effects mapped, editors and a sequencer built and tested against the emulator before they ever reach a real synth.

Why emulate at all?

Because the firmware is the sound. A model made by ear is a sound-alike; running the code gives you the same voice allocation, the same envelopes, the same quirks, the same patches. And it makes the emulator the project's lab bench: you can measure exactly what the synth does, change one thing, and prove nothing else moved.

How it went, November 2026

4 Nov The update file decoded; the emulator plays factory patches.
5 Nov A playable instrument: the panel, a modern editor, a librarian.
6 Nov Our own OS changes on a real UltraNova; a step sequencer; a MiniNova emulator.
7 Nov Measured: a polyphony test on the real synth, the DSP's budget. The first clean oscillators.
8 Nov The filter drive, the worst aliasing on the synth, rebuilt and cleaned.
9 Nov The effects mapped; a reverb that keeps its decay but loses the ring.
10–12 Nov The editor on the iPad; one editor for both synths; a sequencer that lives in the synth's own memory, so far in the emulator.
13 Nov The editor driving a MiniNova over MIDI.

Editors for the real synths

One app for both synths, on Windows and iPad. It talks to your real UltraNova or MiniNova over USB, or through a MIDI interface, and turns into that synth's editor: its own layout, its own controls, its own colours. No emulator needed for this part: it's your synth, its sound, its patches, and a screen big enough to see them.

The UltraNova editor on Windows: three oscillators with their waveforms, the filter and Animate sections, the signal path from mixer through filters to the amp envelope, modulation, effects and the arpeggiator. — **The whole patch, at once.** Every section of the synth on one screen. Drag an LFO or envelope onto a knob to connect it, and watch the knob, the waveform and the filter curve move with it.

The iPad editor's Sound page: oscillators, the signal path, the filter, Animate and Chord. — **Sound.** On the iPad the panels sit on pages sized for fingers.

The iPad editor's Mod / FX page: the modulation sources, the voice controls, the modulation matrix and the effects with their mix faders. — **Mod / FX.** The matrix as a list you can read, and a fader on every effect.

The sequencer page: a step grid with rows for trigger, pitch, octave, velocity, gate, chance, ratchet, legato, timing and a modulation lane. — **A sequencer it never had.** 32 steps, with chance, ratchets, timing and a lane that moves any knob.

The patch browser: categories down the left, a bank of patches in four columns, and buttons to swap, copy or back up a bank. — **All 512 patches, by name.** Browse by category, audition, swap, copy, and back up whole banks to your library.

The piano roll view of the arpeggiator: the notes it will play for the keys you hold, laid out over time. — **See the arp before you hear it.** The piano roll shows exactly what the arpeggiator will play for the keys you hold.

Touch to find. Touch an encoder on the synth and the editor shows the knob it moves.
Animate and Chord with their own panels; the arpeggiator handed to the sequencer page.
Filters you can read: both curves, the drive's shape, and where each envelope pushes them.
Effects with a fader each, the routing drawn as it really runs.

What the project adds

A real sequencer. Or an arpeggiator driven by your keys, playing the synth over MIDI.
A librarian. Your computer's patch library beside the synth's slots: audition, store, back up.
The iPad as a front panel. The whole patch under your fingers, next to the keys.
Two synths, one editor. The UltraNova and the MiniNova from the same app.
In the lab: our own changes to the UltraNova's OS, from mirroring every button to the computer to storing sequences in the synth's spare memory. Tried in the emulator and on our own unit only, and not part of the download.

Beta testing

The editor is in testing on Windows and iPad. Leave your email and we'll write when there's a build you can run. One email address, which devices, nothing else.