Superbooth 23: Modal Electronics Carbon8 Experimental Synthesizer
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Modal Carbon8 · Source: Gearnews
Modal Carbon8 · Source: Gearnews
Modal Carbon8 · Source: Gearnews
On the Modal booth was a prototype of a new experimental synthesizer called Carbon8 which uses phase distortion synthesis. Is this the new Casio CZ?
Carbon8
Details are scarce; firmware is a bit buggy, but Carbon8 was on the stand with a new DSP engine to take on what we’re told is phase distortion (PD) synthesis. We imagine it will be an 8-voice machine with similar filter modelling to the Argon and Cobalt synthesizers.
What we can see from the photos is that Carbon8 has two oscillators with controls such as Contour and cross modulation. It looks like you’d select a core waveform for each and then mash them together. PD is all about using carriers and modulators to produce waveforms, and it’s difficult to see how that all comes together at this first look.
Modal Carbon8 · Source: Gearnews
It also has three FX slots, three envelopes and three LFOs. There’s a Vintage knob, a Warp knob for the filter and the arpeggiator/sequencer we’ve come to expect.
Our understanding is that the new DSP engine is much more advanced, and so costs more than the other Modal synths. I look forward to hearing it in action. More information when we get it.
Update: According to a SonicState video (below) the Carbon8 has 40 complex digital algorithms that give it a harsh and experimental sound. No mention of Phase Distortion. The sound demo was underwhelming, but this is a pre-production model.
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5 responses to “Superbooth 23: Modal Electronics Carbon8 Experimental Synthesizer”
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I think that PD doesn’t rely on carriers and modulations, thats FM Synthesis.
I always have liked this kind of Synthesis, the CZ V of Arturia is one of my favorite Synths.
Phase distortion is not about modulators and carriers .
Its about distorting a ramp wave that reads out a cosine from a lookuptable .
By distorting the linear ramp you are skewing -bending the sine wave .
Hey, I’m simply following the Wikipedia definition which talks about both Casio and Yamaha takes on Phase Distortion and Phase Modulation, both are use one waveform to modulate another.
PD is a special case of FM/PM. When you change the phase by reading a lookup table, you’re modulating the phase and there is a mathematical equivalence of both approaches. In fact, Yamaha’s FM is actually a type of Phase modulation.
The problem involves warping the waveform of a ramp on which a cosine is read off from a lookup table.