After a delightful information gathering period of mulitple weeks I decided to go for an Argon8. The primary reasons were:
- Contrast to the analog gear possibilities in oscillation
- Usable 8bar sequencer with realtime non step recording
- Solid build quality including nice keys.
- Many on top controlls
It was intended as starting point for chord progressions and melody ideas. For that it works quite well. The sequence can be easily deleted and rerecorded or entered stepwise. THis works well on the minilogue xD too with the advantage that you can directly access the steps for editing within 1 bar 16 steps.
Soundwise it fits in pretty well. The waveform banks are not overly exciting but there is enough modulation with the OSCmod and wavemod possible. Serves well for HipHop Melodys and man DNB leads and pads so far. Epianoesque keys are achieavable as well of course.
Iḿ not sure why modal does this but they seem to like shift functions this time in the wrong place. Currently you have to switch one encoder with shift between scanning trough the wavetable and the bank selection. Not sure about you but on a wavetable synth I like these seperate to scan through stuff quickly. Having the OSC pitch on shift would have been wiser. As I usually set this once or at least it is not set in combination with another parameter frequently. Same with spread/ glide, its in the main OSC section and I can´t remember twisting spread constantly during sound design, this could have been a shift thing and been used for the wavemodes instead fe.
The menu! While it has a clean structure I often find myself thinking of what I have to push and thats why my sequences are only named with a single letter :D There are supportive modes where it shows actually tweaked stuff and I tried to set it so that I have the menu encoder as the wavetable bank selector but its gone as soon as you turn something else and you have to go back to the menu page manually. Could have been a fix.
Effects- I like them, al pretty useful and interesting. Extra digi distortion always handy.
Mod - assignment - Fast and easy, never ran out so far.
Envelopes - easy to use and direct access.
Secondary settings are all nicely presented within the 16 buttons. Quite memorable.
Input Output is nice too.
I still have the LCD protector on, that worrys me a little and Iḿ not too sure where the journey goes with it. NIce piece of hardware but the OSC thing bothers me as I spend a lot of time there.