I agree on the volume. Of course, I have the A4MkII and a Grandmother sitting next to it. I’m finding it somewhat gutless in comparison. It’s too bad, because the kinds of sounds it can make could really use some extra punch IMO because they’re great.
I’m actually thinking about picking up some kind of drive device to just leave on its outputs. Maybe tube even. The synth makes beautiful sounds, and is quite flexible. I just wish it had a little more melting and cutting power. My major digital synths of the past were all Waldorf for the most part, (and things like the Hyrdra) which would easily drown this thing out like my analogs do. I can mix around it, and add gain at the Bluebox, but I still think it needs something more in between.
Otherwise, I’m very happy with it, and I LOVE their editor. I almost never use editor software with my synths, but this one is so easy, transparent, that I just leave it open on the computer and pop it up if I’m playing.
Overall a great synth, but just way to quiet/polite especially when the oscillators are faded anywhere between full-on one or the other. I get why they did it, but I feel like it needs just a bit more of the proverbial oomph, and I don’t even make aggressive styles of music most of the time. I guess I’m just used to having synths that I need to dial back, cut frequencies, and subtract from, rather than having something that I need to boost upward.
That said, I intend to hold onto it, because it’s quite cool otherwise. Now I just need to find a good pedal to run it through.
I should have an M soon enough, that will take most of the duties of the Cobalt on, but there are so many nice algorithms on this, that I think it will still find its way into my music.
Hi,
Here’s a demo video of the COBALT8 with patches for Ambient, Techno and Electronica. Maybe you find it useful.
And if you even consider purchasing the pack, there’s a booo-spam-sucks-elektronauts-intro-discount of 25 % percent. Just insert the promo code “obsidian” during checkout.
Yes I also almost sold it. But the demo’s of this 5S made me reconsider keeping it…
I do like the general sound of it, just not too keen on the fx. I have some hopes as the new chorus for the 5S does sound really good. So there is hope that they will improve the fx on the 8 as well
Yep, I have both and they share the same low volume. I use the patch gain to max on every patch, and boost the pre-amps on my audio interface to bring it in-line with my other synths.
You only have Sync In and Out for clock pulses over CV, not CV and Gate. So you can sync Cobalt8 with other gear that has analog Clock/Sync In but you can’t send out the Cobalt8’ sequencer info (other than tempo) from the Sync Out. There are some midi to CV converters out there, but I’m not sure how successful that option would be for a polyphonic synth, as CV is usually mono focused.
Actually pretty tempted to pick another one up, most of the issues I had with it seem to have been addressed (how successfully remains to be seen though I guess)
I didn’t love the interface, there’s more menu diving than I was really happy with for jamming. For me, it’s more of a sound design sort of synth, but to be fair, most of the controls you need for jamming are easily found, I just didn’t personally gel with the interface.
