on te st keyboard
Photos: Mike Cameron
Novation K-Station
Modelled Performance Synth
Novation seem to be on a roll. Scarcely had the
monotimbral A-Station made the cover of our December
2001 issue, when news broke of a 500 keyboard version.
We look at one of the first UK production models.
Paul Nagle
ts always nice when a dream becomes
I
reality, whether it be video recorders that
set their own clocks, a film of Lord Of The
Rings that doesnt suck, or Nicole Kidman
arriving on your doorstep professing undying
love. OK, that last one remains a dream
until I master long-distance hypnosis, anyway.
A slightly more attainable dream began when
I first saw a Korg Prophecy. How wonderful it
would be (I thought) to have a portable,
self-contained, performance-oriented synth
42 SOUND ON SOUND april 2002
that was also polyphonic. The idea seems to
be catching on at last, with three-octave
synthesizers from Access and Waldorf
beginning to challenge the five-octave norm
that seems to have fixated designers since the
Prophet 5. Now Novation have taken the
initiative, following up their desirable
A-Station rack synth with a small, cute,
keyboard version the K-Station.
As the K-Station is essentially an A-Station
repackaged, I suggest you refer to my review
of the latter (see SOS December 2001 or
www.sound-on-sound.com/sos/Dec01/
articles/novationastation.asp) for the full
Novation K-Station 499
pros
Small, sleek, powerful, portable.
Sounds great.
Improves on A-Stations user interface.
cons
Not as portable as it could have been (no
battery option).
No aftertouch.
No Patch names, despite its display.
summary
This diminutive polyphonic synthesizer puts all
the features of the amazing A-Station into a very
portable (and affordable) form. Its a shame that
battery operation was omitted, but the K-Station
is still remarkable value and a highly tempting
addition to almost any studio.
 on te st keyboard
NOVATION K-STATION
story. Actually, the more spacious layout,
improved display and additional controls
on the K-Station create a far more intuitive
interface than that of its older sibling, so it
is this aspect that Ill concentrate on.
Appearance
The K-Stations sleek, silver-grey curves,
blue trimmings and backlit display define
an instrument that is both attractive and
curiously strokable. At 52 x 29 x 8cm, and
weighing only 1.6 kilos, it is impressively
small and light but dont let its size
mislead you. This is no high-tech toy but
a serious polyphonic synth that just
happens to be optimised for portability or
limited space. Its numerous
MIDI-transmitting knobs, soft rubber
buttons and red LEDs offer a high fun
factor, whether for enthusiastic amateurs
or studio professionals.
An important part of the fun equation,
the two-octave keyboard, has a pretty
light action but is quite serviceable. Just
dont be misled by the phrase touch
sensitive in Novations adverts. This
keyboard transmits velocity but is not
equipped with aftertouch a significant
loss of expressive potential. The
keyboards range is extended using two
Transpose buttons which shift it upwards
by a maximum of five octaves and down
by as much as four. The rounded
modulation and pitch-bend wheels feel
positive, and the whole instrument seems
designed to fit comfortably in your lap or
on any available desk space.
The rear panel has stereo outputs,
a headphone socket, the power switch,
three standard MIDI ports, an external
audio input and a connector for the 9V
power supply. Sadly, there is no pedal
Features At A Glance
Polyphony: Eight-note.
Keyboard: Two-octave, velocity-sensitive
with no aftertouch.
Sound sources: Three oscillators, ring
modulator, noise and an external signal
input.
Envelopes: Modulation (filter, oscillators),
Amplifier (level), plus two-stage FM
envelope.
LFOs: Two, with delay and four possible
44 SOUND ON SOUND april 2002
input something that might have
compensated (slightly) for the lack of
aftertouch. A pedal input could have been
used for conventional sustain-type duties
or, if assignable, as a means to fake
aftertouch or breath control. The K-Station
has dedicated edit menus to determine
how it responds to both types of
performance data, yet cannot generate
either of them itself. Speaking of external
control, you can, of course, hook up the
K-Station to be played from a full-size
keyboard, if necessary.
I flipped the keyboard over, looking
hopefully for a battery compartment, but
no luck. It seems a shame that such a
handy, compact synth, which simply begs
to be carried around, has no battery
option. Had it featured one, musicians
could have made the most of their
K-Stations on trains, in the park,
anywhere.
In Use
As you can see from the picture at the
head of this article, the K-Station features
more physical controls spread out over a
greater surface area than the A-Station, so
parameter accessibility is improved
throughout. The increased panel space
has been put to good use; theres a
generous number of knobs and buttons
for the three oscillators, low-pass filter,
two LFOs, the mixer and ADSR envelopes.
There are two of the latter; the mod
envelope (four knobs) for sweeping the
filter frequency, oscillator pitch or pulse
width, and the amplifier envelope,
consisting of four sliders.
The A-Station had switches to
determine (for example) which oscillator
or LFO was to be tweaked. The K-Station
waveforms (syncable to MIDI Clock).
Filter: Low-pass 12- or 24dB-per-octave.
Effects: Seven (delay, reverb,
chorus/phaser, distortion, EQ, pan and
vocoder).
Arpeggiator: Six patterns, with adjustable
gate time and range.
Oscillator modes: Unison, Sync and FM.
Patch memories: 400 (all fully compatible
with the A-Station).
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NOVATION K-STATION
Small But Perfectly Formed
Do you ever get grief from your partner for
locking yourself away for hours with your
precious gear? During my time with the
K-Station, it spent as much time in my front
room as it did in the studio. Consequently,
I was able to get my synth fix on headphones
whilst still passing as sociable! It proved
invaluable for trying out ideas and
programming sounds, and I discovered that
the short keyboard inspires new playing
techniques. It soon became second nature to
constantly adjust transposition, oscillator
mix, timbre and effects as an integral part of
a performance. For solos and basses, the
keyboard length was adequate, and I learned
to adapt and play chords differently. I found
these limitations inspired me, but if you are
more used to pounding out 10-finger chords
on your 88-note weighted controller
keyboard, perhaps the K-Station will leave
you rather baffled. If, however, you learned
your technique on a two-and-a-half-octave
monosynth, this little marvel could be just the
ticket.
improves on this slightly, incorporating
numerous rubber selection buttons, each with
an associated LED for clarity. There is no need
for a Shift button, or for the Portamento knob
to share duties with data-entry, as on the
A-Station. The effects section, too, is far more
approachable thanks to the presence of a
dedicated level control and selector buttons,
and I was pleased to see that the arpeggiator
has its own On/Off button and tempo knob.
Arpeggio notes will be transmitted via MIDI,
but this will only happen as of the OS upgrade
to version 1.08, and it wasnt working on the
review model, which featured v1.07.
If I could have made just one change to the
control panel, it would have been to make
space for a dedicated Oscillator Sync switch
(as featured on the A-Station); as it is, this
feature is only accessible on the K-Station via
a menu. That aside, this is a synth that even
novices should get to grips with easily, but
with sufficient depth to reward even the more
experienced especially in the area of MIDI
Clock-syncable parameters. Usefully, the
synth stores the keyboard transposition and
all current switch settings (such as the effect
selected for edit) with each patch. As on the
A-Station, you can assign the mod wheel to
control effects depth, filter cutoff and/or
oscillator pitch and modulation.
Menu, Sir?
When you give the Menus button a prod, the
rubber keypad (normally used for patch
selection) becomes a series of menu entry
points. In this mode, the Program Up/Down
buttons become page up/down controls
within the menu system, and values are
edited by the data (Program) knob. Eight of
46 SOUND ON SOUND april 2002
the 10 menu functions are labelled in dark
blue (which isnt easy to read against the
black background) and consist of detailed
parameters for oscillators, filter, LFOs,
envelopes, effects, mod/pitch-wheel control,
aftertouch and breath control, and arpeggiator
settings. The remaining menu options are
Utilities and Global which take care of patches, and also because onboard storage of
essentials such as patch dump and restore,
MIDI and external input setup, and so on. One
useful menu option determines whether or
not held notes are silenced when the
Transpose buttons are used. I found it cool to
trigger a low drone, transpose the keyboard
upwards so it keeps playing, and then play a
solo line over the top not something youd
normally expect to do on a two-octave
keyboard. To silence notes held in this way,
you just push the Program button.
Sounds A-OK
At any time during a sound-programming
session you can press and hold the Compare
button to hear the original stored patch and,
naturally, the Write button is used to store
your creation into any of the 400 memory
locations. Patch memories are arranged in
banks of 100, the first 200 already
programmed at the factory. As they are the
same as those in the A-Station, I suggest
checking out our example MP3 recordings of
them (see www.sound-on-sound.com/
soundbank.asp).
Its odd, but somehow, I still find myself
surprised that something as small as the
K-Station manages to sound so good; maybe
its because Ive been conditioned to think of a
polyphonic synth as huge. But with its wide
range of analogue-type sounds, the bijoux
K-Station can hold its own alongside far more
expensive models. The onboard effects do the
business (I found the distortion particularly
pleasing), the oscillators are rich and full, the
filters are sweet and musical (a recent update
has smoothed out the slight quantisation I
remarked upon when reviewing the A-Station)
and the envelopes are fast and punchy.
Sonically, its hard to fault.
Display
Few would mourn the passing of the
A-Stations two-character LED, here replaced
by a blue backlit LCD, thus making cryptic
menu abbreviations unnecessary. You can
therefore see the full names of all menu-based
parameters along with their values. I never
once needed to refer to the manual, and
found everything I needed without fuss.
Having said this, it is a little frustrating that
Novation did not implement patch naming,
keeping instead to the number system used
by the A-Station. Thus, the display shows:
Prog Number 124 and Prog Number 266
instead of Pad3 and Trance7. According to
Test Spec
Novation K-Station OS version reviewed: v1.07.
Novation, this is because they wanted to
maintain full compatibility with A-Station
400 patch names would just push the
K-Station above its current memory capacity.
However, apparently the design bods are
looking for a cunning way to squeeze a
naming facility into a future upgrade, so Im
crossing my fingers. As parameters are
altered, an asterisk appears next to the
program number to show a change has been
made. Furthermore, if you tweak a control
say filter cutoff the parameter name and
value appear in the display, along with a small
graphical representation of the distance
between the stored and current values.
Conclusion
This is almost the portable synth Ive wanted
for years. I say almost, because the lack of
aftertouch is a drawback from my point of
view, possibly because I use it in performance
even more than I use velocity. Depending on
your preferences, though, you may take a
different view. The two-octave keyboard is
small and, in an ideal world, I guess another
octave or even a half-octave would have made
it more versatile. But, as the lady in the Renault
advert says, size matters. The K-Stations great
strength is its portability if you need
something convenient for composing in hotel
rooms or for throwing into a bag and taking
down to the local pub for a jam, it really takes
some beating. I guess this is why I found the
omission of battery operation so annoying.
This aside, though, there really isnt much to
complain about. It would have been nice if the
display had facilitated the use of patch names
rather than numbers, but even so, the
K-Station is clearly a bargain at just a hundred
quid more than its rack counterpart. The
user-interface enhancements, plus the cute
keyboard and performance controls make it
even more desirable than the A-Station for
many applications.
So, despite the two drawbacks Ive
mentioned, the K-Station gets my vote. As a
self-contained gigging synth capable of a wide
range of pads, organs, basses, leads, and
arpeggios, there isnt currently anything that
comes close in this price range.
information
499 including VAT.
T Novation +44 (0)1628 678520.
F +44 (0)1628 671122.
E sales@novationuk.com
W www.novationuk.com