Yeah, Wavetable and Vector Synthesis imo have always been kind of poor terms for what is basically the sample based oscillator family of synths. Wavetables generally have interpolations between waves that isn’t just crossfading but it can be crossfading. Where the interpolations between waves/roms/samples on the wave station is always just a volume tied to the joystick position but you can have all sorts of other things happening to make it possibly seem like more is happening. But yeah Korg has really good market presence, compared to a more boutique brand like Modal. Really all the recent options are quite different in there approach to S&S.
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I’ll try to post something more detailed in a couple days, but my first impressions of the Argon8 are: 
in that order.
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I’m now feeling the same. I ordered the Argon a few days ago, should be here on Monday. Watched a load of Hydrasynth videos, and didn’t like the sound of it anywhere near as much as the Argon. Sounded a bit thin/digital/harsh, can’t quite explain…however, I just saw Stimming’s second video with some sounds, and now I don’t know what the fk to do hahaha
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There’s a Hydra here at the local dealer’s. I’ve played it a few times. I don’t like much about it, and ironically, it’s made me favour the Argon more, though I’ve yet to see and meet one in the flesh. Dealer’s not big on Modal, so I might never see one.
Obviously, other people may have different opinions, but if this is your concern, having played both, this is my own: one of Argon8’s oscillators sounds thicker, fuller, more “organic” (an incredibly subjective assessment) than any attempt I had (or found browsing pthers’ presets) in Hydra. I sold my Hydra, disappointed in the sound engine, and I ordered an Argon8. As I waited for it to arrive, I worried, maybe I had made a mistake, maybe it was going to be more of the same, why was I repeating my mistake? Maybe the fault wasn’t in the synth at all, but in my expectations.
Literally, the first time I plugged it in, first preset, wow, just blown away with the sound engine.
You can do more with the Hydrasynth, design-wise; five LFOs, five envelopes, an endless mod matrix, a billion sounds and destinations. It’s great if you want to make evolving soundscapes, complex pads; I definitely do not think it is a bad product. But it doesn’t hold a candle to Argon8 in terms of “fullness” from my subjective experience.
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A small follow-up, there is some Argon8 kick drum preset I can’t remember the name of. It was so deep and rumbly that listening to it through my headphones actually made me feel ill. (This is a compliment.)
Wait to you hear a Modal 002!!! --Argons 12 voice big brother at USD$4999
Since I’ve had the Argon8 a week, I can shed some light on how it’s holding up.
Question: Does Argon8 sound fat or thin?
Answer: Both. It can do wafer thin delicate sounds, or big unison hits.
Question: Does Argon8 sound analog or digital?
Answer: Both, but more digital than analog IMO. It can be surprisingly analog at times, but it’s strength is adding that digital edge to go outside the bounds of what’s familiar.
Question: Argon8 or Hydra Desktop or WaveState or Digitone?
Answer: Listen to each, buy what you love 
For me I’ve been waiting for high resolution digital to land, and it’s here. Digitone moved the bar by trading a few voices for higher fidelity. I mean seriously listen to this thing:
I don’t know it for a fact, but to my ears the Argon8 has that same “HD Digital” character, and that is what got me excited me about it.
Question: Anything about the Argon8 specifically that’s disappointing or underwhelming?
Answer: Very few things, and I’ll try to be as fair as I can be as I truly love this instrument so far.
I think the reverb needs an upgrade, and when adding some effects you lose volume.
There is no VST support yet, but it’s coming soon.
I have heard some minor clipping when holding 6 note chords with FM on sine waves (might be maxing out the processing).
I have had about 4 “Boot error - please restart” messages so far.
Question: What are the standout features of the Argon8?
Answer: First off the sound (which is the most important thing IMO). It has a tonal character that is unique to my ears.
Build quality is very high - higher than I expected for the price.
Encoders are light, but work great once you are used to them.
Keybed is nice, and feels premium.
LFO2 is fantastic. OK - I have to rave about LFO2 a bit… Being able to map a real audio rate LFO to waves, pitch, volume, filter, etc. is powerful and fun. I criticized the limited mod matrix before I got hands-on, but what synth has a polyphonic LFO (that’s 8 LFO instances) which can be mapped to 8 destinations simultaneously? and at audio rate? (the highest setting is f*2.5, which I take to mean note frequency * 2.5 - that’s FAST!)
Ability to use arp with the sequencer is very cool.
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I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe the character of this synth…“HD Digital” is so OTM.
In some ways it reminds me of the character of the Kawai K5000, one of my favorite digital synths, and another synth that sounded utterly futuristic and next-level hi-fi when it came out.
The UI implementation is really smart (e.g., click a modulation source, move a control to adjust the mod level and boom you’re done). Hope the reverb can be improved with an update. Otherwise, I’m loving just about everything about it.
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Agree on the effects. The delays are pretty unremarkable too. Thankfully the synth engine itself sounds great, so for now I’m quite happy to add any desired effects post anyway.
My early take on the effects is: if you zero in on them and focus on how they perform in isolation, they are not the most impressive, but they do complement the sound engine very nicely. They blend into the patches, rather than draw attention to themselves: more like, “I add a bit of dimension to this sound” than “I AM A REVERB LISTEN TO ME BE A REVERB.” If I want that second experience, I can grab that from a variety of sources, just like I do for my sound sources that don’t have built in effects.
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Yeah, that’s a fair assessment
Yeah I think the more exciting thing about it is the new “HD” digitals is it becoming more affordable now, that sort of hifi digital has been around for awhile now imo. Stuff like the P12 and Modal 002 came out about 7 years ago using sharc DSPs, I suppose they are hybrids but the tec has been there for quite awhile now. At least that is how I see it now, we have hifi digitals that are priced to sell.
Seems like the Wavestate is focused on old tech plus some nice new digital filters, but I don’t think I would quite put it into the same hifi camp as the Digitone and Argon8.
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Thanks man, appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I kinda felt that from various demos/videos, but it’s hard to really tell how well it translated to a video recording, so hearing it from someone that’s actually tried both, and gets what I mean definitely puts my mind at ease.
My Argon8 will be here monday, I’m excited to spend some time with it.
So after a few days of intense use:
It sounds very good indeed. The oscillator section is brilliant, the osc mod and wave mod is considerably extanding the range of the synth. The wavetables are quite good ( even though i wish there was a little more sinish ones, they pair so well with the osc modifiers )
It’s perfect for drones and pads with lots depth and texture. It has a lot of sweet spots and an honest bottom end (it’s quite good for basses actually).
The sound is definitely cold but a nice cold, like nice sunny dry winter cold. and its not too harsh for a wavetable synth ( the filter helps a lot of course )
It can be buzzy and raw but not necesseraly what it’s aiming at in the first place. I also managed to get some feedback/resonnace stuff with the help of the delays and reverb, but you have to push it to.
It’s simple and pretty straightforward to use, the UI is smart and clear. No major flaws here and some very good ideas here and there. The architecture is very linear though. No audio routing of any sort.
Sequencer is simple and efficient, with clever little twists and those glorious 4 lanes of parameter automation ( ! ) ( I wish you could trig the sequencer to use it like an EG )
I like the reverb, it can be very metallic, it’s not very flexible as it can’t be massive and shimmery but i like the sound of it, quite unusual, on the cold/spring side, clearly. The effect choice is a bit conventional though, nothing spectacular ( classic/boring Flanger/Phaser/Chorus etc ). They sound ok and are well implemented so you use it for the sound design. It could have been a bit bolder though…
I don’t realy understand the gain staging at this point. The effects considerably lower the level of the output so you always have to use that “patch gain” setting. Weird.
Two main points of perplexity:
The encoders … realy don’t like them. I dont know if it’s my unit but they are very inconstant in term of wobbliness. Some are quite wobbly, some less, it’s very disturbing, and they feel so plastic and light. I also don’t find them particularly precise So the general feeling is quite disapointing considering the build quality of the rest of the synth (wich is impressive). Don’t understand the choice, it’s so crucial. I would have prefer a plastic chassis and more decent encoders to be honest.
Some design choices that make it feel over-calibrated. It can go crazy but sometimes it feels like the designer voluntary restrained it to. It has the that “127 syndrome”, you always want to go past the maximum value available… Particularly present in the effect section but also true for the rest of the synth. Example: delay feedback doesn’t go to 100%. Osc pitch are limited to + and - 24. The filter is very gentle. LFO 1 is quite slow. EGs can’t be very slow. The reverb is good but too shy etc Force you to push it by yourself, wich is not necessarily a bad thing.
Great synth overall, the oscillator section and the smart UI makes it all worhtwhile. Some design choices that I don’t get but I guess I’ll get used to it.
Thanks Modal !
Cheers
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Yes, and it’s something I’m spending more time on as I get familiar with the synth. I’d rather not spend time on it and I’m hoping they can sort it out a bit more in the future. Modal was pretty open that gain staging was a challenge for them due the flexibility of this architecture.
For me they physically don’t bother me, but a few of the rates need tuning. For example if you map LFO1 to the filter, setting the modulation range is fine, but if you use both hands to play something (to test it), then it makes the edit encoder closer, so if I grab that then adjusting the rate is super slow vs using the filter encoder.
They did call out “Bourns continuous rotary encoders throughout as standard” so it doesn’t seem they were going the cheap route. That said, I do prefer the DT encoders, but it’s probably unrealistic to expect 29 of those on a product with a similar price.
Well said.
In his WaveState impressions video, BoBeats stated that the Argon8 is different entirely, and that the WaveState has more in common with ModX or Jupiter-XM.
It’s a valid point with the ModX, as the WaveState does the “massive soundscapes” thing without native FM, and adds a unique sequencer.
ModX demo’s have a similar sound (well except for the FM parts)
I find myself using the “Velocity + Sustain” latch a lot (I think it goes to sustain; two buttons to the right of the velocity button–I saw Loopop do it in his review) when patching to make some of these adjustments easier, since, for instance, I can’t change the wave mod and play a note without threatening to sprain something.
For such a powerful part of the sound design, they made changing wave mods something that I think is very easy to miss–nothing on the front panel points to it, and it uses a process that is quite different from most of the other secondary functions accessed via shift; the same goes for changing the filter type. It took me a couple of trips to the manual to really get the process down; I imagine if I didn’t use the synth regularly, I might forget after a couple of weeks and have to return to the manual the next time I used the synth.
This would be very cool; I also find myself thinking: I can use the LFO as a one-shot envelope… it would be nice if I could loop the envelopes to use them as LFOs (particularly the filter and mod envelopes).
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My guess is that anything you access by holding the patch button were late additions (at least it feels that way).
And yeah, Wav Mods are a whole other thing to explore, and extend the diversity of the wavetables greatly. I know it just came out, but I already dream of “Here’s a new Osc Mod, and 4 new Wav Mods!”
They can really warp a sound; I do wish–and again, perhaps this is planned, since I can see where you’re coming from with the idea of wave mods as a late addition–you could get a visual representation of what they did to the selected wavetable.
Some of them are familiar, and it is easy to intuit their response, but others seem to have quite different responses for different wavetables. With some of the wave mods, I feel a little like I’m searching around in the dark, which makes using them strategically in sound design difficult. Right now, I’m fine with “change this, oh cool” approach, because it’s all new and exciting, but later on, I think I will find that a little frustrating.
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