This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Novation Peak MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Novation Peak: what it answers to, and the 246 controls it offers, on firmware 2.1.

At a glance

Firmware

This page describes firmware 2.1.

MIDI channel

Any one of 1 to 16.

Voices

8, or 1 as set on the instrument.

Note range

Not recorded.

Velocity

Received.

Aftertouch

Channel pressure and polyphonic, each answered.

Pitch bend

12 semitones, and the range can be changed.

Program change

Received and sent, with 512 presets.

MIDI clock

Received.

Start and stop

Not recorded.

Control change

74 controls, in the tables below, 18 of them with a fine half on a second controller number.

NRPN

Supported. 172 of the controls below have one.

System exclusive

Supported.

Controls

In the order the definition gives them, by group. Under each control is the name a program calls it by, once pymidiinstrumentdefs.load("novation/peak") has loaded them.

Voice

Oscillators

Mixer

Filter

Envelopes

LFOs

Effects

ARP

Mod matrix

Settings

Where these facts come from

Source documents

• Peak user guide, for firmware v1.2, dated 7 August 2019, its user manual, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).
• Summit and Peak User Guide Addendum Version 2.1, V1, for firmware updates 2.0 and 2.1, dated 27 July 2022, its user manual, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).
• Peak | Novation Downloads, its download page, read on 3 October 2026 (the file read).

How they were read

Peak user guide, 44 pages, for firmware v1.2, created 2019-08-07 by its own metadata, and the "Summit and Peak User Guide Addendum Version 2.1" (addendum p. 1), 18 pages, created 2022-07-27. Novation publishes no programmer's reference and no separate MIDI implementation for this instrument, unlike its Circuit, so these two documents are the whole of the published map.

BOTH END IN A MIDI PARAMETERS LIST and the two together are this definition: 230 rows over the manual's pp. 40-43 and 19 more on the addendum's p. 18, each row giving the parameter, whether it is addressed by control change, by a pair of control changes or by NRPN, the number, the range and the default.

THE TABLE RUNS BOTH WAYS AND ONE SETTING GOVERNS THE WHOLE OF IT: "With the default CC/NRPN setting of Rec+Trans, Peak's physical controls transmit their settings as MIDI CC or NRPN data. The synth engine itself also responds to received MIDI CC/NRPN data with this setting" (manual p. 35), the alternatives being Receive, Transmit and Disabled. So no control below carries a direction of its own: they all go both ways or none of them does.

EIGHTEEN CONTROL CHANGES CARRY A FINE HALF, which the manual marks by writing "CC pair" in the kind column and two numbers in the next, always n and n+32. Each such parameter runs 0 to 255 rather than 0 to 127, and none of the eighteen fine halves is also a control change in its own right - both checked for every row, because this maker writes a two-number cell in the same column for two different things.

THE SAME NOTATION MEANS SOMETHING ELSE ON AN NRPN ROW, where 0:14 and 25:6 are the two halves of one parameter number rather than a pair of controllers. Each is recorded as MSB x 128 + LSB, the number that goes on the wire, so 0:14 is 14 and 25:6 is 3206. The two meanings were separated by the check above: every control change pair is n and n+32, and no NRPN row satisfies that.

THE MOD MATRIX IS SIXTEEN SLOTS OF FOUR PARAMETERS and uses the NRPN high half as the slot number: slot 1 is 1:0 to 1:3 and slot 16 is 16:0 to 16:3, which is 64 of the controls below. The second, later-numbered block at 25:x and 64:x is the addendum's, and the gap between 16 and 25 is not explained.

TWO ROWS ARE NOT CONTROLS AND ARE NOT BELOW. Arp/Clock Rate is the only row in either document whose number reads NA:NA, so the tempo - "The range is 40 to 240 BPM" (manual p. 30) - is reachable by no message. And the addendum's Atouch Scale is the Summit's, by that document's own heading.

ONE PARAMETER IS RENAMED RATHER THAN ADDED. NRPN 0:5 is "Voice Unison Spread" (manual p. 40) in the manual and "Spread" in the addendum, which says so itself: "The Voice panning setting 'Spread' (formerly known as 'UniSpread') has broken out into four unique Spread Modes" (addendum p. 3). It is one control under the later name.

AND ONE NUMBER WAS RESERVED BEFORE THE PARAMETER EXISTED. The manual gives Osc Common Noise HPF the NRPN 0:12 and a range printed as 0-0 ( to+), with a default of (0) - the one row in 249 whose range and default are not values at all, because firmware 1.2 had no high-pass noise filter. The addendum adds the filter, under its own heading "Update Features Exclusive to Peak" (addendum p. 12): Novation "added a High-pass noise filter to the Osc menu to match Summit" (addendum p. 13) with a "Range of adjustment: 0 to 127" (addendum p. 13). That range is what is recorded against the manual's number - and joining the two is an inference, because the addendum never gives Noise HPF a number. It rests on the name being the same and on 0:12 being the row the manual blanked. Nothing else in either document connects them.

THE GROUPS ARE THE TABLE'S OWN SECTION HEADINGS - Oscillators, Mixer, Filter, Envelopes, LFOs, Effects, ARP and Mod Matrix. The ten rows the manual prints before its first heading have none, and are grouped as Voice, which is the menu the manual puts them in; the addendum's table has no headings at all, and each of its rows is placed by the menu the addendum says it lives in.

THREE RANGES DO NOT FIT THE LISTS THEY SELECT FROM, which is worth knowing before trusting any of them. Every Mod Matrix n Source1 and Source2 row gives the range as 0-16, which is 17 values, and the table that "lists the sources of modulation available to Inputs A and B of each Slot in the Modulation Matrix" (manual p. 39) lists 23 of them. In the table's own order seventeen values end at CV +/-, and the six beyond are the LFO 3, LFO 4 and bend-wheel entries, though no page says the values follow the table's order. The addendum adds a twenty-fourth, "We've added Noise to the Mod source menu" (addendum p. 10). So the thirty-two source controls say range: unknown: a row and the list it selects from cannot both be right, and no document says which the instrument follows. And so do the sixteen destinations. Their 0-36 fits the manual's own list of 37, and stopped fitting by the firmware this file names: "We've added three new destinations to the Mod Matrix Destination menu" (addendum p. 5), under which the addendum names eleven, and its own list of MIDI parameters has no matrix row to restate a range in (addendum p. 18). Until 2026-10-12 all forty-eight carried the printed ranges, because a control with no range reads as 0 to 127 and the format then had no way to say that a range is not established. And Delay Sync Time is given 0-18, 19 values, where the Delay Sync Rate table (manual p. 37) lists 16 divisions; the Arp/Clock Sync Rate table lists 19, and the three divisions the delay table lacks are exactly the arpeggiator's three longest, so 0:94's range reads as copied from 0:116's. It runs past its list where the matrix's run short, and it says range: unknown as they do: a row and the table it selects from cannot both be right. Until 2026-10-13 it carried [0, 18] as printed.

THE PATCH COUNT IS STATED TWICE AND SPLIT DIFFERENTLY EACH TIME. The feature list claims the instrument is "Pre-loaded with 286 brand new Patches" (manual p. 4) with "Memory for 226 additional User Patches" (manual p. 4), while the chapter on loading them says "Banks A and B are pre-loaded with 256 great factory Patches" (manual p. 11) and that "Banks C and D are for storing your own Patches" (manual p. 11). Both readings total 512, and only the second is consistent with four banks of 128, so presets rests on it.

THE TWO LFOS ARE DESCRIBED AS IDENTICAL AND ARE NOT ADDRESSED ALIKE. "The parameters of LFO 1 and LFO 2 are immediately user-adjustable via a full set of top panel controls" (manual p. 20) and their menu pages are the same, but LFO 1 Range is NRPN 0:68 where LFO 2 Range is cc 83. Every other pair of LFO parameters matches in kind.

A GREAT DEAL IS NAMED AND NUMBERED NOWHERE, so the 246 below are not everything the instrument has. Nothing reaches LFO 3 and LFO 4's waveform, rate or sync rate - the addendum numbers only the phase, slew and fade time it adds to them - nor LFO 1 and 2's Fade Sync and MonoTrig, nor the envelopes' Hold Time and Repeats, nor the delay's L/R Ratio. All four parameters of every FX Modulation Matrix slot are unnumbered (manual pp. 33 and 40), where the sixteen main matrix slots are numbered in full. And so is every item in the Settings menu, which is where the MIDI channel, Local, the CC/NRPN switch and the Bank/Patch switch live: the one exception is the tuning table's selection, which the addendum numbers at 25:6.

TWO CONTROLS BELOW ARE NUMBERED AND DESCRIBED NOWHERE, which is the opposite case. Voice Keyboard Octave, NRPN 0:6 over 61-67 for -3 to +3, matches no parameter in the Voice menu, the Settings menu or the Init Patch table. Patch Genre, NRPN 0:1 over 0-9, likewise: the manual has a patch Category on save and never a Genre. Patch Category's own range of 0-14 implies fifteen categories and the manual lists none of them.

NOT RECORDED: the note range, which no page states - this is a desktop module with no keyboard, played with "the MIDI controller of your choice" (manual p. 4). Transport, which nothing in either document mentions: not start, not stop, not continue, not song position. Whether MIDI clock is sent, since both documents describe only the receiving side. The MIDI mode, there being no implementation chart in either document. And the clock source itself, which is a five-way setting - "Auto, Internal, Ext-Auto, MIDI, USB" (manual p. 30) - that the MIDI parameters list gives no number for.

ONE FURTHER DOCUMENT COULD NOT BE READ. The downloads page offers "an online version of this user guide and translations" (download_page) at userguides.novationmusic.com, which answers a fetch with a Cloudflare challenge rather than the guide. Whether it is a later edition than the 1.2 manual is therefore not established, and nothing here rests on it.