Modal Electronics Carbon 8 First Impressions: "Sweet & Sour Patches, Kids?"

Demo and commentary on the new Modal Electronics Carbon 8. This video compares and contrasts the harsh side of the Carbon 8 with some of the "sweeter " sides of the synth. I used a sustain pedal throughout, which to me, opened up the patches a good deal. An expression pedal would work well also. As I mention in the video, there's a lot going on under the hood which does indeed lend itself to experimentation. I've found it fairly intuitive to build a few patches from the ground up, whereas I usually edit existing presets to suit my needs. Hopefully, Modal Electronics will be around for a long while to support this synth, as it's likely their best so far.
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[@MichaelHarper-o9o]

I purchased one about a month ago. I have found its sound cover a vast array from punchy to angelic. The filters are brilliant, modulation extremely versatile. It does have a bit in common with, both, the Argon and Cobalt synths making navigation fairly easy. The effects I find really. It was a waiting game worth playing. Kind regards Mick.

[@AutoHot]

nice one. I want to get it later to my collection of argon8+cobalt8

[@Farold_Haltermeyer]

The engine really reminds me of the Soma Terra, very warm yet razor edged...great to hear more of it, thank you! Steep price for what it is but I really would like to see these guys stick around, they really do have a character of their own in all their synths...and that’s from an analog addict 😊

[@aquaticborealis4877]

Sounds great

[@luisbarrera5740]

Oh wow. I didn't think the carbon 8 was ever going to happen. Good to hear it is. Wonder if they plan on making a module as well.

[@jmcbeady8210]

Nice sounding unit.

[@dicefall9]

⚠️Cool, but it would be a good idea for Modal to rework their website so that users could at least get the firmware updates for their actual products.

[@DrewGoff-ss6nf]

Also their website gets viruses on your computer.

[@s28music]

Barry from Modal says: "...we are still working to have the necessary support in place, this includes the website and MODALapp support for Carbon 8. We will announce when this is ready as soon as we can." He also made mention that support was lacking at this time because "a number of dealers around the world have begun selling Carbon 8 synths ahead of the official launch." I'm hoping that launch day changes things, but not really expecting anything for a while. 😑

[@jriceblue]

@@s28music Thanks for the update. I hope the situation improves. :|

[@aounms]

😮😮​@@DrewGoff-ss6nf

[@mwjalexander]

They couldn't even give me a fix date for the screen in my cobalt 8 so I sent it back and then they appeared to go into receivership so I gave up

[@kierenmoore3236]

Thanks for the First Impressions video. 👍🏼 Sub’d. How is the Carbon8 better than/different to the Argon8, in real terms, tho’ … ? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@s28music]

Well, I'm not an engineer but it seems that the Carbon has a few more things in the oscillator section. There are 40 "algorithms" though I've also seen it expressed as "waveforms." There are two sets of these and a contour control to dial them in. There is a glide, drift, level & tuning for each oscillator. You can still stack voices. It gets really interesting with the xmod control which I assume cross modulates the two oscillators. The Argon8 doesn't have all of these features. The Carbon8 has wavetable algos (it looks like three in the menus) but also does phase distortion which a lot of people are excited about. The two are similar, but different. That's about the extent of my knowledge at this point. Once the app hits, I can do a deeper dive. I will say I'm liking the sound of it.

[@kierenmoore3236]

@@s28music Many thanks for your detailed response! Look forward to your future videos. There were definitely some great sounds there! Thanks again.

[@martinneal5240]

does it still have the garbage knobs and jerky and hard to dial in soulless feel of my beautiful sounding Cobalt...jesus wept I hope not. The Modal app interface for the Cobalt is impossibly cramped and difficult to follow or read...worse than the hardware. I feel like putting an axe thru my unit sometimes, its that bad and without doubt the most difficult to follow system I have ever encountered.

[@camreese1444]

Mine doesn’t have any presets loaded on it and the dealer was useless in helping. Is it possible to export and share your presets that I could upload onto my synth?

[@camreese1444]

Also got no response from modal support

[@s28music]

That's wild. I'll take a look later today and see if I can export a sysex file. Have you tried a factory reset? It may be the same process as the Argon, but if it was never programmed to start with there may be no data.

[@s28music]

email me directly from the contact info for this channel

[@jumpingman8160]

Isn't the Carbon just a mash of leftovers from other previous Modal products, like a desperate attempt to salvage the company? I think I saw a video about it here on youtube about the Modal CEOs and the Carbon when Modal was in deep shit

[@happylittlesynth]

It's actually a culmination of the previous two, and they've pushed the DSP to the max. There was a quick interview about it on sonic states channel.

[@jumpingman8160]

@@happylittlesynth that was the one

[@Farold_Haltermeyer]

@@jumpingman8160 nah, defo a evolution, but if you're referring to the builds using existing tooled machines that would make sense as, like Moog, they could not maintain what was being designed without finding ways to increase margins...and the new owners had those builds up and running. Reducing that down to "a mash of leftovers" is a tad extreme...and if a mash of leftovers sounds this great then sign me up for more

[@jumpingman8160]

@@Farold_Haltermeyer I was trying to express the urgency of the product. Maybe I expressed myself wrongly