Modal Cobalt8

To me the keyboard was the big winner. It feels and plays so nice. If it weren't for the money I would have gotten the big Cobalt8 just for the keyboard.

However a synth is about its sound and it is so clear and transparent I can not combine it with my other sounds. This is very personal and I am not saying that the Cobalt8 is bad sounding. I, however, need to bring down the filter at least 40% to have a somewhat pleasing sound to my ear. Next to that all presets are drowning in extreme stereo spread, delay and reverb... bass, bell, pad or string.. to my ears they all started to sound the same. They all have that glassy sound. All the sounds are there but I can not emotionally relate to them.

When I checked the filter (clean with lots of resonance) I could hear the steps jumping from one position to the next so obvious I knew this would not be the synth for me. In this day and age it should have a much better resolution.

When I wanted to set lfo from 0 to 2, I carefully turned the knob but position remained 0 so I gave it a little push and it jumped to 5. Then turned the knob backwards to 1 to 6.. it took me a while before I got it where I wanted. Then I waited for a long time to hear the effect but the lfo was simply not running yet when set to 02. You need to set lfo speed at least at 5 or so before it starts running. Specially with digital I like to have a precision and this annoyed me.

The volume knob is very loose and when adjusting the filters or effects I could touch the volume knob by mistake making a jump up or down in volume which should never happen so easy. Live this could be a disaster.

The filter is boring. This is a big issue for me. It says 'toem' no 'tjoem'

Limitations in an instrument can work out inspiring but having a digital synth I feel there must be more possible with some sort of modulation matrix. Why not exploit the strengths of this machine?

I really wanted to like this one. I think if you play presets or self created sounds as they are you can be happily in love with this synth. But if you want to adjust sounds in realtime while playing you bump onto little and bigger issues. When I listen to recordings I did with the Cobalt I could' t help but listen to a vst. A vst built into a wonderful keyboard.

This is not a deep dive rating, more like first impressions and I must say that the first thing I noticed was how solid built this synth is. And after some some testing of factory patches, I can say 100% this is a real musical instrument, that sends out some real good vibes this far, and it's clearly designed for those who want to be creative, like building some awesome sound patches and textures. For a digital sound system that Modal calls extended virtual-analogue, I can confirm that I hear this speak for itself out of my KRK studio monitors, and playing the great Fatar keybed is just part of the pleasure with this thing!

I like to mention that before I decided to go for the Cobalt8, I had been looking for a synth with some real capabilities for a long time. First I was focusing on the Poly Brute from Arturia, then it was Matriarch by Moog, for a moment the Wave2 from Clavia Nord, Juno X Roland etc., watching numerous Youtube synth reviews... But as I looked closer and did my math, I found out that Modal Cobalt8 was my guy. Of course this is the price value vs. quality/musical needs. All these famous names are no doubt over all great instruments but when you have already in your setup: a drum machine, mono analogue synth, guitar w/effects etc., there is not much more to add other than a powerful virtual analogue synth that in my case happens to be the Modal Cobalt8 because this thing has got “something” that I fell for!

Just want to add, that out of the box, it was playable almost instantly, just get the Modal app, connect to android or iOS device via USB and the app takes you straight to firmware update, after that you are good to go!

Happy sounds!