I like the pack of baby wipes in the upper corner. Realness, haha. 
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Quick question regarding the knobs if I may?
Have you used the Skulpt? If so how do the Cobalt knobs compare? I’m interested in these ‘bigger brother’ synths but my experience of the Skulpt and Craft left me cold.
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Knobs and baby wipes… what is happening in this thread??
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The little shits gave me 10 minutes on my own with it, then those wipes came in real handy.
No, sorry. What I can say is that the whole thing feels real sturdy. It’s surprisingly heavy and the knobs, though a bit wobbly, don’t feel like they’re going to be a problem. Overall I’d say the build quality is about the same as my Digitakt. Free rack ears in the box too, which is nice
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Cool, thanks for your reply. DT standard build wise is good to hear👍
I’m sure there’s people fussier than me who will hate the knobs, but I think they’re ok.
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Here’s my thoughts on the Coblalt8 after playing with it for about a week.
The build is really nice! It’s hefty, solid and really nice looking. The blue faceplate is thick ol slab of metal and is real pretty.
As soon as I touched the knobs I knew what people were talking about. They do feel light to the touch, and do have a little bit of wobble. But after a few hours of using I got used to it and it felt good. I would not worry about this, although I would only ever be using it at home. I thought the nice big cutoff know looked nice, but I actually found it to be a bit too big for easy tweaking. I was considering popping a smaller cap on it actually.
Programming this things is a joy. It’s got enough knobs that most things can be accessed easily, and I think the shift functionality is really well implemented. This is how all synths should do modulation assignment. Once you do have to go beyond the knobby side of things, I did find the two clicky encoders to be a bit of a chore to navigate through the hidden settings, like paging through the mod matrix. Also, it’s so easy and fun to assign modulation, those 8 slots can quickly disappear. A few more would be a real improvement.
Sound wise, the oscillator algorithms do open up some interesting possibilities that I wouldn’t expect from a VA synth. They are beefy too; I got some really hefty basses out of this. I also really like the fact that the “detune” knob, where it a pplies to an algorithm, can split the sub-scillators over 5ths, 7ths and octaves. modulating this was one of the first things I tried and got some fun results.
The filter is fine. It sounds pretty great at low resonance, but I found it a bit whistly at high resonance. The “balanced” LPF fixes this but sacrifices self oscillation. Modulating the morph parameter gets some pretty funky results, and the balanced phase filter is good too.
It is pretty quiet on the output. I do find that a bit strange. I found I ended up increasing the patch volume of every patch I made to compensate for this. The good thing is there is little noise. I found that even though the Novation Peak was louder, it was also more noisy (due to the analogue stages I guess).
Finally, I have always hated joysticks on synths I’ve used… but this is great. It feels good to use and is easy to move in only X or Y directions.
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I really like the joystick.
Never really used mod and pitch wheels because I’m not a “player” but I can definitely see myself using the joystick a fair bit.
Agree on the big filter knob, it makes it feel like there’s not a lot of resolution on the cutoff.
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Maybe they’ll send a small knob cap if you ask nicely 
I’m the same, not really a player and never used mod wheel a lot, but this joystick is really satisfying. Fun to have different changes in up and down directions. That’s when the 8 mod slots can’t start to look a bit slim tho
How do you like the sound?
I’ve literally had 15 minutes with it on headphones, but what I heard I liked a lot.
There’s a guitar patch in there somewhere that sounded awesome, and being able to modulate the delay with the LFOs and the LFOs with the mod env. basically makes all my shoegaze dreams come true. Output is a bit on the quiet side though, but that’s fine, as I’m planning on putting it through a pedal or two anyway.
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Hi,
People are used to potentiometers on synths which can fit tight and provide resistance but can get scratchy over time. But Modal uses Bourns digital encoders which are frictionless, because digital encoders make more sense otherwise a dial will being a different place to the actual.
They actually cost more and will last longer than potentiometers.
The trade off with frictionless encoders is that there is a bit more give than "pots"and people sometimes associate this will them being cheap but that’s not the case.
FYI Bourns digital encoders were used on all the flagship 00 series.
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Hello all. I have the Argon 8m and have ordered the Cobalt 8m… how are they side by side sound wise? Looking forward to receiving mine.
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Is this slugishness concerning just the screen, or the sound also?
Just the screen. It is a bit slow sometimes to register changes on the screen, but not that I’ve noticed with the sound, though I have only been playing with it for an hour this evening.
Just found the master control for the headphone output, much louder now…
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Does it scratch the synth itch that the TE mega FM was causing?
Oh it should do.
It’s got plenty of grit with the lo-fi settings, but has the added advantage of being able to sound both very digital and fairly analogue.
And it’ll do pulse width on triangle and saw, so be ready for non-stop hoover sounds for the foreseeable.
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Nice, and the way it can clone its oscillators to get like 4 osc detune… hoover bliss.
Enjoy
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I will.
Had a good couple of hours with it last night.
It’s a beast.
This synth looks very interesting to me.
For Cobalt8 owners, how would you compare / rate it vs other poly synth(s) you own ?