Modal Electronics Argon8 Sound Demos, 8-Voice Wavetable Synthesizer

September 11, 2019 Synth Anatomy Hardware, News, Sound Demos, Synthesizers 0

Argon8 Sound Demos are have been released showing nicely how the new digital hardware wavetable Synthesizer from Modal Electronics sounds.

The announcement of the new Modal Electronics Argon8 synthesizer caused a lot of interest last week. It’s an 8-voice polyphonic wavetable Synthesizer with a big feature set for a very affordable price.

Highlights for me are the advanced wavetables engine with classic and modern synthesis aspects, a real-time motion sequencer with up to 512 steps, the FATAR TP9/S full-size keybed with both velocity & aftertouch and the 4-axis joystick with which you can bend nicely multiple parameters at once.

The most important thing about a new synthesizer is the sound. Here you can learn especially what character he has and how far the engine can go. Many sound demos of the Modal Electronics Argon8 does not exist, because it’s a prototype.

However, some video creators have already recorded some sounds, mainly from Knobcon.

Argon8 Sound Demo By Bonedo Synthesizers

Sound Demo By Synthmania

Features At A Glance

True 8 voice polyphony
Road ready Steel and Aluminium chassis
120 carefully crafted wavetables split into 24 banks of 5 morphable waveform sets,covering virtual analogue classics through to cutting edge EDM and many from the original Modal 002 as well as a whole range of mathematically generated tables. Additional PWM bank and 4 noise/modulation banks accessible on Oscillator 228 static wavetable processors including de-rez, wave folders, wave shapers, phase shapers and rectify that can be applied to the 120 wavetables to give a mind boggling array of permutations and new waveshapes
32 high-resolution wavetable oscillators, 4 per voice, with 8 types of oscillator modifier including: Phase Mod (FM), Ring Mod, Amp Mod, Hard Sync and Windowed Sync
FATAR TP9/S Full size 37 key keybed with both velocity and aftertouch
1.54 inch large OLED display – that provides instant visual feedback to the user at all times of playing/editing
Bourns continuous rotary encoders throughout as standard
A 4-axis joystick that can be assigned to a huge range of modulation destinations and virtually ‘locked’ when desired
Three dedicated envelope generators for AMP, MOD, and FILTER that can be accessed independently or all three simultaneously including negative (reverse) versions.
Two pole morphing resonant filter
Waveshaping distortion
Three incredibly powerful independent and user-configurable stereo FX engines that can create sophisticated Delays, lush Reverbs, Flanging, Phasing, and Rich Choruses
Glide/Portamento with both legato and staccato modes
Hugely powerful “Mod Matrix” with eight assignable slots with four additional fixed routes, 11 mod sources and 52 destinations
500 patch memories, all fully editable and ships with 300 factory programs and 200 user patch spaces. Patch upload and download through the free MODALapp
Two Audio rate LFO’s with tempo sync (one poly, one global). Polyphonic LFO can sync to frequency divisions
Inbuilt sophisticated programmable arpeggiator of 32 steps with rest capability with up to 2048 steps before repeating
Real-time sequencer with number 512 steps with input quantise and four recordable /editable animations
Multiple keyboard modes, Mono, Poly, Unison 2, unison 4, unison 8, Stack 2 and Stacks
All time-based FX, LFO’s and sequencer arpeggio can be either clocked internally or externally
Sync in/out
Full-size MIDI five pin din sockets
Full-size quarter inch jacks for both audio and external control such as sustain and expression.
3.5 mm stereo input with ability to route incoming audio through the FX
Free dedicated app that works on Mac, PC, iOS, Android and works under VST3 and AU.