Novation A-Station

OS used 1.0

The A-station features a lot of knobs and the basic parameters is easy to edit. The effect section and some more advanced features require a bit deeper editing, with only a two digit display! It's a bit tricky, but you'll soon get a hand for it.

Enough voices, but it is just monotimbral, pitty... Ok effect section.

WAKE UP EVERYBODY! Most reviews here says that this thing sounds really good. Someone even gave it a 10... This was the first "real" analogue synth I bought, but I wasn't really satisfied and purchased an Access Virus rack classic instead. I bought the A-station brand new, but the virus second hand, and paid about the same for both (500 USD). If I rate the Virus a 10, the A-station will maybe get 3. It sounds okay and have some cool sounds, but why buy it when you can get so much more for the same money? I like some lead sounds and basses, but the pads are horrible.

Works fine.

Don't know.

As mentioned above, this isn't a monster synth. But, every sound has it's place. You can't make a good tune by just layering ten of the fatest sounds you can find, it would just be a mess. Sometimes, very often indeed, you need to use different kind of synths in your tunes to get a well balanced mix. For that reason every synth is usable somewhere. What synth you prefer also depends a lot on what music you wanna create. The fact that the synth is just monotimbral indicates that it's ment to be used as a complementary device to other equipment. Not as the "central hero" in your setup.
The A-station is pretty okay but you could get so much more...

Lots and lots of nobs on this, plus a 2 digit led. Nigh on impossible without the manual to get into the guts of it, difficult with it. Come's with 200 editable presets and another 200 spare for storing. Not the most friendly of interfaces and considering it was fisrt ever synth, pretty damn off putting.

Monotirmbral, which was dissapointing. But it has a load of effects a vocoder, arpegiater, 3 oscilators, midi sync and loads of other stuff.

This is where it really shines. The presets are great and nearly all usable, plus they can be edited. Using the onboard distortion on this fella gives you some really fat sounding leads and basses. The pads, strings and organs are lovely and you get get some truely impressive noises out of it.

Had a few problems early on. Haven't gigged with it yet, but will be doing so soon.

N/A

I bought this eighteen months ago as my first rack mounted synth, since then i've got a waldorf xt, a emu virtuoso 2000 (plus mophatt and techno roms) and a ER1. I've been making music for around 16 years of all mainstream styles (pop, rock, metal, funk) This is one of the synths i nearly always use on any track i'm making it so versetile. I recently got the v-sation plug in which now means i can use more than one in a track. This means i've been able to remove it from my rack to play live and make way for a new access rack. Considering these are now going for around half what i apid for it they represent excellent value for money.

Version 1.06
Presets sound good, amazing, even; sound editing is easy as it's all laid out with the knobs and switches.
It's when you want to edit effects, the vocoder, MIDI that it's such a pain to use --> the two character LED has cryptic messages and you have the have the manual handy.

8 voice polyphony, monotimbral. Good enough for an "analog" synth.
Effects are good, though not easy to edit. Arpeggiator is simple but surprisingly flexible. Vocoder is very good.

Solid sounds. the best sound sources I have owned were a Roland JD800 and a Korg Prophecy. This is at least as fat as those.
The basses are punchy, the leads, pads and brasses are very very good. The resonant filter (12 or 24 dB) sounds amazing.

The organs fail, but this is not an organ synth. The e pianos can work with some chorusing and distortion.

Don't know yet. Survived a trans-Pacific flight.

None yet

I've been playing for 15 years, and currently have an EMU MP7 (with sounds of the ZR), a Korg X5DR and T2 to go with the A-Station.
I've owned the following gear at one point or another : Roland JD800, MC303, Juno 106, PMA 5, DR5; Yamaha CS1x, CS2x; Korg X5, Prophecy, Electribes A and R among many others. The A station holds up well compared with those in terms of pure sound.

This is very enjoyable, a pleasure to use when you don't have to dig into the submenus. when you're playing, it's an absolute 10.

When you have to dig in and sync it to MIDI, and work through the sub menus, then it's a big pain.

But I'll be keeping this, and I'm even planning on getting a K-station.

Version 1.0. The presets are very good. With 200 preset sounds (you also have 200 user sounds) its ups and downs, but i was somewhat impressed.
It is easy to edit the patches, very easy. Most of the time u just turn the knobs and things change. To edit the effects you have to push a few buttons (menus and sub menus) but its not to difficult.

It is a easy synth to edit. Its a standard 3 osc. subtractiv synth engine, and I think (unlike some others) it would be a good synth for a novice. You have : LFO --> OSC --> MIX --> FILTER --> ENVELOPE (Amp and Filter). The basics ! You can go deeper to, but its easy to understand.

The manual is very good.

8 voice poly. Monotimbral. Good effectsection. Has a vocoder and an external input (great stuff).

3 Osc (with Ring mod, PWM and basic FM) - Sync osc 1&2 - Noise gen.
Mixer
2 LFO's
12 & 24 db filter. Self osc at 24 db.
2 env generators

Have to use a trafo and has no power off switch, but thats fine by me.

Not many realistic sounds, this is not a Roland JV-1080, its a virtual analog. A very good virtual analog.

Its can sound very "modern", dance, trance, ambient and fairly "retro", like Jupiter8's, Prophets and Junos.

I use a Yamaha SY-77 and a Roland JX-10 keyboard as controllers. The module responds to velocity and aftertouch. Its responsive and you can sound mellow and calm or lound and screaming.

It's small! Very small! 19" rack modul but only about 10cm deep. It looks cool :-) (i have the blue model).

When I first got it (I bought it second hand) it appeard to be broken. When I turned the knobs, nothing made sense. When i turned the "envelope-attack" button, the "filter cuttoff" changed, when I turned the "filter-cutoff" button, I adjusted the volume, and when i touched the "volume" button, the modul just powered down..

In short, I had a panic attack! :-).

I opened the modul (its almost empty in there !!) and tried to figure out if I could do anything. It looked OK... The only thing I could do was to turn a cable...(its like a computer harddrive IDE cable, u have to have the red stripe on pin1).... and presto everything worked. How the h*** that cable got turned I wonder..

Dont know. I tried to uppgrade the op.sys, but got an ERR (error) in the display.

Its very good! I have a Juno 106 and a Akai SG01v vitage module to do the same job, and I think I am gonna sell them now. The Juno for sure.

I paid only 200$ for it and its worth that for sure :-). If it got stolen I would by the Nova or Supernova if I had the cash, if not I would buy an A-station again.

I've been playing for about 15 years. I have a lot of gear and this beauty have become one of my favourites.

As I said earlier, I would rather have a multitimbral Nova or Supernova, but for the price I paid its unbeatable!

Get one if you can, or check out the K-station. Thats a A-station with a keyboard, a LCD display and some other goodies.

I think im using sofware version 1.06 but I'm not sure. This thing isnt the easiest rack synth to control, Novation have seen fit to only provide us with a pissy two digit display which is a damn nightmare to navigate through at first. But, on the plus side, you do get 25 knobs to play with. These control the important features. I never really worry about preset patches on synths as they tend to be fairly shite, but the A Station does have a few good presets, I'd say that the're above average. Editing the basic structure of a patch is dead simple as is saving patches, however, to edit FX settings, arp settings etc, you have to get used to using the numerical keypad and display. I've had the synth for a while now and rarely have to refer to the manual (Which is actually quite good in my opinion). It just takes a bit if getting used to.

I'll say straight away that this is a great sounding synth but there is a big 'BUT'! The first two major flaws are:
1) Another stupid external power supply. Why oh why can't manufacturers just put a proper one in their equipment? Most users will happily pay the extra money, I mean seriously, they go to all this trouble to make great sounding, professional gear and then give us a silly wall wart to power it with! Listen up Novation!
2) For some reason the A Station designers thought we would love the machine so much that we would spend every second of every day playing the damn thing because they have'nt given us a switch to turn the friggin' thing off! I know it will most likely make no difference to the health and well-being of my A Station, but the rest of my gear has power switches, In time the A Station mught feel left out...or...um something. Anyway, one other flaw is that there is an audible click when cycling through patches but I figure this will be fixed in a software update.

As for the features: Its a 3 Osc, single part 8 voice synth with delay, reverb, chorus, distortion, eq, arp, vocoder and i'm sure its got a whole bunch of other stuff hidden in that damn menu too. Full MIDI control and sync, headphone output, a bunch of knobs, buttons and switches, you know the drill, typical VA setup. Stereo output on jacks and a single jack input for a vocoder signal or to use the FX on external gear. All housed in a sturdy 1U rack case... with a fucking wall wart.grrrrrr.

This is where the A Station redeems itself, It sounds, to put it mildly, absofugginlutely sensational! The vocoder is the best of heard in this price range, great basses, leads, pads, strings. Its all great, ring mod and sync are really nice and its filters are fatterthanyomama. But what really suprised me about the A Station was its internal FX. Now, when I buy a synth its usually the last thing im interested in. Why? Coz the're generally pretty shit, thats why. But the A Station's FX are actually really good! For a start, you can add any amount of any effect to a patch simultaniously, and then they give you a fair amount of editabilty on top of that. Often I've gone to send it through outboard, then ended up just using the internal stuff. Nice one Novation. At one stage I was actually thinking about grabbing a couple more A Stations but with the V Station coming out, there is little point.

It crashed once and really scared the shit outta me. all i could get was garbled mess on the display and outta the outputs, you guessed it, it took about an hour of re-powering and knob twiddling to get it to work again, no probs since.

Never needed their support.

I believe I've mentioned this before in relation to other gear, but if it were lost or stolen, I would be ruined because the theives would steal everything else as well (My computer and processors are in the same rack!). Despite the problems with this box, at the end of the day I get a great sound out of it, and I got it for a good price. I wouldn't replace it if it were stolen, I would merely reposses it from the theif after Ive made him eat his own nose off his face. I use all sorts of gear, yamaha, roland, clavia, alesis, behringer etc (As well as lots of software), but no matter what im doing, the A Station and my Nord Lead 2 make it onto every track and every performance. If you can get past the design flaws and get used to the menu editing, you've got yourself a great synth at a great price.

OS version 1.06
This unit is my first "analog synth with knobs" ever.
I may then lack the typical "anaddict" jargon, but well, this has plenty of knobs to create whatever electronic sound you're after.
It is cheap but has a vocoder, so I could begin with some Kraftwerk-like singing.
I'd say I like it.
It could be easier to use, for example if the knobs would just readapt their positions to the currently loaded program.
Else, well, it's a matter of exploration, sometimes, you'll get an almost perfect sound which the 1-grade rotation of a knob will make useless, so beware...
The reason it has only 8/10 is also because of the lack of a front panel power button : the device is so short that it is difficult to dive my hand into the back of my rack in order to unplug/replug the synth in case I need to quicly reset it.

8-voice polyphonic, it is more than enough as a part of my studio : actually, its cheapness and its monotimbrality make it specifically aimed as being a complement to one's studio.
If you want 2 sounds, just buy a second one but for the price, market-segment, this is the device.
I am not into these table-boxes like the Electribes, the Yamaha xx200, etc. I lack room which is the reason why I am happy to have this as a rack.

It sounds incredible... except if you don't want it too : it has a very wide panel of possibilities, the only thing I could not create yet were typical perc sounds but the D-Station is coming for this... ;-)
I just love synths that sound "richly-dirty" because they have their own personality, this one has exactly this spirit.

No problem, it eventually crashed when I'd play with the arpeggio (not always) but now I never had such problem again.

?

I'd buy it again, of course, unless I could get a second hand Supernova instead, so, as then it is perfect but not ultimate because you can't drive a whole studio with this...
This is however for the very same reason (individuality thus uniqueness) that I give it a 10.

Software version 1.0.

Presets: Some are very, very good and warm. Others, not so good, as usual with any synth.

Editing is problematic without a sound editor. Even with all the knobs a sound editor would make this thing so much nicer to have and work with.

The manual is well written.

8 voice I believe. No keyboard so no action.

The built in effects sweeten things up nicely and help out overall with some sounds.

No expansion possibilities that I am aware of.

The usual MIDI stuff, hook it up to your controller and go.

No onboard sequencer but the arpeggiator is fun.

This is a virtual analogue module, and a good sounding one at that. I liked the warm smoothness of the decent analogue patches right away.

It would work well for many styles, techno or otherwise.

The onboard effects are nothing to complain about, I'll get to complaining here soon.

I noticed it has a glitch now and then as to playing dynamics. It does respond to velocity quite well. There is a good patch to demonstrate this as to how soft or hard you press the keys on your controller.

This is where the complaining begins. It is made in England I presume, or at least the company is from there, so I thought. IT quit working momentarily, the led went out and no sound, although the unit was not deenergized. The keypad is very cheapo feeling and you have to press just so to advance programs. It is annoying that units that have so much potential and sound so good cannot be built to mil-specs and provide quality housings and interfaces. So what if you pay another 200.00 bucks, get it right the first time and create something that lasts.

I could not depend on this for gigging. Home studio use is o.k. as long as you are nice to the unit.

Never dealt with them. Unless it goes down hard I probably won't deal with them either.

I would like to upgrade the OS and see if that increases it's reliability but from the reviews I'm not so sure. What a hassle anyway for something you've spent a chunk of change on as it is.

If it were lost or stolen I doubt I would replace it. So far as being worth what you pay, who knows. I think Novation has a decent reputation for there Pro Synths and it would be nice if they could hang on to that reputation for the lower end stuff.

I have been playing for a few years so far as synths go. I have a Yamaha SO3 and a Red Sound Darkstar XP which I love.

I really like the sounds of the A-Station and it does deliver in that area. It's compact and has knobs to tweak as well so with time it may be an asset. I hate the interface/keypad 2 led readout approach. It needs a sound editor bad.

I opted for the A-Station vice the Em-u Proteus 2000, I'm still thinking about getting the Em-U Proteus though. I wanted the anolugue sounds from the A-station so that's what sold me on it, and it has the "sounds".

I wish there was a sound editor for it.

It does the trick for sounds, I'm already using it for recording so I won't knock it for sounds.

Think hard before you get one of these, the quirkiness in operation is a big turn-off, no pun intended.

No power switch, small display.... does that really matter once you have the distored 303 riff from hell pulsing away? Only annoying thing so far is getting values accurate using the small knobs and 2 digit display.

Effects are excellent - all controlable via MIDI which is nice, eg, pump up the distortion in real time using a wheel on your master k'board - brilliant. Arpeggiator is good (not great), Vocoder is great plus you can route external audio into the unit to process the sounds - how cool?!

90% of the sounds are great - some of the basses are excellent, very rounded and punchy. Nice pads although you would have to tweak some of them to get that lush sounding Junoesque warmth. Some lead sounds are a bit gutless, but generally the sounds that are good are very good. I'm a sucker for a 303 and this unit doesn't disappoint. Responds too well sometimes to Aftertouch and the like but everything is tweakable so....

No probs yet.

Had a question for Novation about getting the Arpeggiator to send out the MIDI notes it is playing so you can record the pattern into you sequencer. Emailed back about 1 month later so not the quickest reply I've ever had. By the way, the answer was no, you can't not until the OS gets upgraded....

If I had my chance again, go for the K Station. I'm using the A station with a Korg X3 as the controller/sequencer, RolandAlpha Juno 1, Yamaha A3000 and some FX so the A station fits well into the rack, but for pick-up-and-play-ability I would grab the keyboard version. I love it - anything you don't like fiddle with until you do (apart from the small display natch). Theres nothing out there for the price, you really can't go wrong. A few minutes playing in the store convinced me - it's inspirational.

OS 1.0 Editing patches with the knobs is easy (as you might expect). The 2 digit LED and menus although somewhat arcane, really aren't that difficult to come to terms with. The manual is good - much better than most.

The sounds are good for electronica and there are even some good EPs and organs for more traditional rock and pop. The pizzicato strings patch is awesome! -Several good leads, pads, and basses too. I think that it would be difficult (or questionable!) for anyone to gripe very much about the A Station on a basis of sound quality.

No problems so far other than the well documented occasional popping sound when changing patches and the arpeggiator did freeze up once when I was playing in a high octave - OS 1.06 supposedly fixes the arpeggiator problem though.

I haven't dealt with Novation CS yet.

If it were lost or stolen I would definitely buy another one or I might be very tempted to buy the new Novation K Station 4 or K Station 5 especially if they are priced at or below $1000. Although I have a few ergonomic gripes about the A Station I love how it sounds and that's really the bottom line. I try to keep my set-up compact and the A Station along with a Roland JV 1010 and Yamaha DX 200 are the main components of my rig.

I am using OS 1.06.
Presets vary from thin to excellent. Lots of them are off-the-shelf dance music sounds, so if you're writing for the raver set, you can get started right away. Also represented are some nice pads, basses and leads, as well as a few organ and bell sounds.

I haven't done any editing. The multiple knobs make it easier, but the two digit LED is not particularly helpful. If you want to do major sound creation, get a computer-based editor.

The manual is decent, I haven't used it much.

8 voice polyphony, but monotimbral. This is the biggest disadvantage to the synth.

Built in FX are good. Delay, reverb, vocoder, distortion, etc.

Has no provision for memory slots or other such add-ons.

Its multiple knobs send MIDI data, so you can capture them while playing into a sequencer.

Sounds vary, most are good, a few are great, and a few are lame. As I said above, if you're making cliche dance music, this synth is perfect. If you are not, plan on spending a little more time fitting its sounds in or creating your own.

Notably absent are the types of morphing pads I like.

You can map controllers to its various LFOs, modulations, etc.

I have not gigged with this unit. I am wary of the wall-wart power supply, and will carry a backup when I use it a gigs. Its solidly built in a metal case. Put it in a secure rack, for sure.

There's a little noise sometimes when switching patches and on power-up.

This sucks: no on/off switch. That's right, you have to unplug the little stubby DC plug in back to turn it off. Suggest running the wall wart into a simple $2 USD switch and using that for power on/off instead.

I've not been happy with Novation. I emailed them complaining about lack of support, and received no reply. Their web site needs some fine tuning, and they need to better encourage 3rd party sound development. This is a good synth for the money, but would be much better if there were another 200 well-designed sounds for it.

To their credit, they recently ran a "submit a file" contest, and accepted my submission of a Cakewalk Instrument Definition file. (Though they didn't email me to acknowledge this.)

If this were lost of stolen, I would upgrade to something else with a real power supply and multi-timbral capabilities.

I've been playing off and on for 12 years, but recently started up again with piano lessons and gear.

I use a PC with Delta 66 soundcard, Sonar, Mackie 14 chn mixer, Yamaha S80 and the Novation A-Station. I write Art-Rock, i.e., The Police, Dismemberment Plan, Steely Dan, Rush, Dream Theater, etc.

I chose this synth after demoing a number of units at Guitar Center. I was less than impressed with all the new hyped equipment like the Korg Triton. Then I tried the A-Station and was impressed by the beefy sounds coming out of that tiny box.

I chose it for the sounds and the price. If I could get a similar synth with power supply and multitimbral capabilities for close to the price, I would.

I may seem rather hard on the unit, perhaps I will come to like it better once I've had it for a few months and can get some more sounds into it.