Modal Electronics Carbon8M Synthesizer

General

Despite its compact size, this Modal Electronics Carbon8M has enough controls to be a real eye-catcher. At first glance, it looks uncluttered and clear, but the true magic is under the hood. Deep inside this synth, you will see that this is a pretty elaborate beast of a synth. Way back when, the synth world consisted of sawtooth, square waves and sometimes a triangle or sine as a bonus. In this Carbon8M, you'll find 56 waveforms: 18 algorithms and 38 wavetables. When you consider that you're going to edit all those timbres with filters and envelopes, it's clear that this module has a lot to offer.

Modal Electronics Carbon8M: a palette of timbres

So not only in terms of oscillators you get much more than what we had in the 70s and 80s, the number of filters also goes through the roof. One, maybe two, sometimes three, and we had to make do with that back then, which were a lot fewer filters than the 34 (!) that are in this machine. Of course, you also get extensive LFOs and plenty of envelopes to shape the sound with. The effects section should not go unmentioned either. These provide effects like reverb, delay, chorus and LoFi, and such effects should not be underestimated, they are very important for the overall sound.

Target

It remains a subtractive synth, so its capabilities will be familiar. It's not a very difficult synth to get to grips with, also helped by the sharp displey (OLED). You can store your own sound creations in 500 memory locations, and sequences can be stored in 100 locations. There's even an app available: the MODALapp, for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, and as an AU/VST3 plugin. A very versatile synthesiser, great for leads, pads, drones, effects and more.... It could be a nice top-synth in a band's synth-rig, for one thing! In any case, you won't get bored of it easily.