Modal Argon8 – 8 voice polyphonic wavetable synthesiser

Give us a new element pls?

I absolutely love the new waveform display, which now shows the numerical value of the wavetable position pointer in addition to a graphic of the selected wave. This makes it much easier to set precise wavetable position modulation depths relative to the absolute table position value.

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V3 was enough to tempt me to take the plunge, under £500 new in the UK seems like a fair price…be here tomorrow :slight_smile:

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Went for the argon aswell, after hearing about v3. Looking forward to it!

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I have been playing with my new Argon8 tonight.

Build quality is very good for the price point, it’s really heavy and a good keyboard, nice fee.

Probably a bit spoilt ‘starting’ with V3 (it was on 1.2 when I got it, so the first thing I did was upgrade which was fast and painless).

The VST control app is a real bonus- I have the Agon over by my modular away from my DAW but I can play and control it with my usb midi keyboard under my monitor (S61) like any virtual instrument without getting up- nice (cost me another £50 to by the app to do this with my Pro3)

Some lovely sounds in there (just put the new V3 patches on) - I used to have a skulpt so new what to expect, MODAL definitely have a sound, it can go from quite ‘Microwave’ sounding to a much warmer VA type sound, I like the layout of the controls, nice and simple, fast to tweak anything - screen is nice but hardly needed (the way I like it with hardware synths).

I like the joystick- I know some people prefer the traditional wheel as you can leave it in one location (you have to use ‘hold’ on the joystick) but the joystick has the advantage of being able to set ‘up’ and ‘down’ for example to do different things, this is pretty fun.

It pairs really well with my Syntakt…that’s where I am thinking the midi cable is going to live…the Argon and Syntakt ‘look’ and ‘sound’ good together and you can use the audio in on the syntakt to get some ‘analogue’ filter fx if needed… perfect coffee table duo :slight_smile:

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I reviewed V3:

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Nice.

So now that the v2 Cobalt8 firmware is out, does anyone (maybe those with both synths) have any insight into what the Cobalt can offer that the Argon can’t?

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I would suggest the biggest difference is in the core oscillator sound - the Argon8 wavetables will have your basic waveshapes (amongst many others) with a bunch of different fixed modifiers and then some ways to dynamically modulate the waves. Almost certainly more timbral variety than the Cobalt8. However, despite being more based around the traditional waveshapes, has quite different algorithims for modulating the waveshapes. Less variety, but perhaps the sounds it can create are more to an individuals taste and that said, the range of timbres is still huge… just not as huge.

I reckon it’s very much a personal preference thing and also dependent on what other gear a person might have… I’m well placed for wavetables elsewhere which was why I ended up going for the Cobalt8… still need to update the firmware on it though…

One of the encoders just shat the bed it seems.
I knew the day would come, but this is sooner than expected (although obviously past warranty ffs). Not even one of the most used knobs.

Everything else feels great about this synth but the encoders are honestly shit. If I had to make the decision today, I would probably return it and go for a Explorer or Minifreak.

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