Modal Electronics Cobalt8

Whatever it is, I’m sure Octatrack users will be very happy.

8 Likes

And the Blue Marvin, but it’s not that either.

Cobalt stays in-line with an element theme. Cue up Tom Lehrer.

I was pulling for Krypton. Waldorf and Strymon recently did Iridium.

So keeping expenses down and using the basics with the Argon, you’d presume it’s digital, or principally digital.

I was looking at an Argon 8X, but this looks like another 61 key synth. Can you throw us a bone and let us know if it’s in the same price range? :slightly_smiling_face:

The bone is on the way in a couple of days.

Just me but i think price (and cool performance) is what this is about, so i expect that it’s close to the same price, unless there is a lot of hardware bits added.

They call the series that the Argon is part of on their site the “Noble” series, which says to me that it should be called one of Helium, Neon, Krypton, Xeon, or Radon. As a successor to Argon, I’d assume it’s the Krypton.

2 Likes

Xenon is a great name for a synth IMO. Xenon luminesces with a blue sort of light.

2 Likes

Really pleased to see that we’ve not had a tediously long tease period here… just slightly coquettish. Hopefully, with the plan to re-use form factors that a desktop unit will also feature in their thinking.

1 Like

Last year the Argon and the Hydrasynth got announced at about the same time. So hopefully there’s a new ASM product out there in the wings too.

1 Like

Yeah, my first thought was “Neon” to be another ideal gas. When I looked at the blue though – “Cobalt” was the first element that came to mind. What if it’s the start of a different series?! Heavy metals! :metal:

2 Likes

It’s called Cobalt8.
The page is ready on the Modal website: (only accessible with a password):

So we can assume that it’s 8-voice polyphonic.

6 Likes

The picture is available.

“8 Voice Extended Virtual-Analogue Synthesizer”

10 Likes

probably sounds nice
no silly teasers and trips to the forrest.
hopefully modal are doing well enabling them to release more things…

i had their drum sampler it sounded good and had a few nice unique features.

4 Likes

Ah. “Grown-up Skulpt” it is @HoldMyBeer.

1 Like

Very cool!!!

Me neither, I’m at +10. Though, I can magnify the picture with my glasses.

1 Like

So comparing pictures the front panel looks identical, outside of the color.

Is the Argon a two board system, like the Elektrons ? A UI board and a sound generation board. If so, and i realize no one of us common Elektronauts here would know, but do you suppose that both boards are the same ? In other words if you swapped code between a Cobalt8 and an Argon8’s would you change from one to the other ?

If so you know people will be asking for that.

Off-topic Aside: I’ve often wondered about this with the more general purpose Elektron boxes, like the Digitakt. If there was (magically) a different code for it, could it be a completely different machine ? Let’s say a Virtual Analog Digitakt, or a Wavetable Digitakt, or a Granular Digitakt ?

5 Likes

VA? Interesting

Interested to see what they mean by “extended.” Argon was for the most part a wavetable synth, but wasn’t it able to do most simple analog waveforms, along with having a convincing digital filter? Maybe its a simpler architecture, but with the computing power diverted to providing very high-resolution oscillator waveforms.

2 Likes

Maybe a lot of FM and Phase Distortion synthesis ideas thrown in?

2 Likes

First impression because of the color was, hey a new PPG but it’s not…