Modal Skulpt

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SLiC wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:19 pm
AnX wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:16 pm
BONES wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 11:26 am Really? Is no-one interested in one of the best synths to be released in the last year that's priced closer to VSTi than to other hardware? Wow, strange place, this.


why would anyone buy such a limited digital hardware synth? For that money i can get an amazing soft synth and run 20 instances....
Lots of people play live and prefer hardware, I know I do- I find it utterly soul destroying and very 'non-musical to be sat in front of a monitor with a keyboard and mouse….I will happily pay more to get away from a bloody screen for a while, probably why I mainly play guitar!

i agree, but these tiny things are not something i would like to be fumbling with on stage

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I bet we could pair them up with a couple of crafts to make a super synth! :hihi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8K6uSo2-zg

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SLiC wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:05 pmI had a good look at the Modal Skulpt (even downloaded the editor) but haven't pulled the switch yet. Its definitely good value, but its also digital which is a lot easier to reproduce on an iPad or whatever (unlike say the UNO which I bought as its much harder/more CPU intensive to get a good analog sound from digital gear). I have nothing against digital, in fact I ended up looking at the Modal and then buying an electron Digitone that was twice as much!
I don't look at things like that. It's not an either/or situation for me. If it was I wouldn't own any hardware because it is all so much easier and better in software. Hardware for me is all about having toys to play with, where software is what I use for getting work done.
I Still haven't ruled it out, but its not a no-brainier price for me (My UNO was 160 after jam points, this is 260 UK) and I AM going to buy the new Berringer Oddesy as soon as that comes out- Berringer have changed the game as far as hardware Vs software synth prices - the Model D and the Neutron are both about the same as the Modal, the Crave quite a bit less...all monoi of course, but all analog and with a lot of modular patch points (something I am in to), so £250 ish buys a LOT of Hardware Synth right now!
I'm interested to see what Behringer offer with their Odyssey but in 2019 any synth without patch memory is a waste of time and money as far as I'm concerned.

The 8 slot mod matrix in Skulpt beats any patch bay hands-down and mod assignment in Skulpt is ridiculously simple - press the Assign button, turn the knob of the destination parameter until you have the right depth, then unpress the Assign button. It's the hardware equivalent of DnD and it's brilliant.
AnX wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:16 pmwhy would anyone buy such a limited digital hardware synth?
Because we don't all suffer from such limited thinking.
For that money i can get an amazing soft synth and run 20 instances....
Really? On the bus on the way to work? Kickin' back in a park on a lovely, sunny day? (OK, you're in England, that probably doesn't apply to you.) Stuck in an airport lounge waiting for a delayed flight? It runs for 12 hours on a set of batteries and it's small enough to fit in a messenger bag. I'll be out and about later today and both Skulpt and Uno will be with me. It's kind of the synth player's version of George Harrison's ukulele obsession, only it doesn't annoy everyone else (because headphones).

Hopefully, at the end of the day, it might also mean we can get up on stage with just my tiny, 5 year old 8" tablet instead of a full-size laptop, which would be way cool. As long is the tablet works OK with Overhub, I should be able to do it. We've got enough hardware now that we can perform all our songs with just Orion (32 bit on the tablet) and no plugins at all. And if we can achieve this, the whole set-up will still fit within the airline luggage requirements for the two of us, so we can take it on the road just as easily as our previous software based stage set-up. To me that's just crazy (which is why I want to do it), given that 25 years ago I needed a van to cart my live rig around.
SLiC wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:19 pmLots of people play live and prefer hardware, I know I do- I find it utterly soul destroying and very 'non-musical to be sat in front of a monitor with a keyboard and mouse.
I've never worried about that per se. I find a decent MIDI controller to be just as useful as a hardware synth and I've always thought of my PC as our backing band and what we do over the top of it is no different to what a lead guitarist does in a proper band situation. i.e. I've always felt the PC replaces the other band members and what we do is the same as we'd do if it was a backing band instead. We simply can't play everything ourselves so there will always be a sequencer in the set-up somewhere.
Dasheesh wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:56 pm Hey, have you tried the batteries yet Bones? how much juice do you get out of them?
A put a set in last night. I'll let you know how long they last when they've gone flat.
Last edited by BONES on Sat Apr 20, 2019 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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This is the demo that really convinced me of the value of Skulpt. It's not the first time, either, it was Perfect Circuit's demo that convinced me I needed an Analog Keys, too. They always seem to find the patches that get my juices flowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T51W5jAKdU
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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I have a Skulpt and I think it sounds great! I only have two complaints:

LEDs are too bright and make it hard to read the labels on the panel. And there are too many secondary shift-functions for basically every control, necessitating the need to frequently read those labels. Maybe it won’t be an issue after I spend more time with it and memorize the controls.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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BONES wrote: Sat Apr 20, 2019 1:20 am
Really? On the bus on the way to work? Kickin' back in a park on a lovely, sunny day? (OK, you're in England, that probably doesn't apply to you.) Stuck in an airport lounge waiting for a delayed flight? It runs for 12 hours on a set of batteries

nobody is going to listen to a synth in isolation for 12 hours in a park or airport

we'll see how you get on with it and the uno after you have sold them and bought the next big thing, like you did with the other stuff :lol:

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Had one and sold it the same day, any hardware living in my studio has to intergrate into my DAW environment, the skulpt sequencer would never sync to live or cubase, I had constant stuck notes when using the sequencer, the editor crashed and lost connection always.

Shame but not for me :-(

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ok first: have you HEARD that?! that's some old school ana balls type sound. the bottom end gives you shivers down the back.

secondly: modal is THE premier synth company right now. i could only dream of the type of set up i had back in the single, spendthrift, thought i was going be famous days, party till i die days. but, the point being, they are very good with software and along with the craft 2 release will come an outstanding editor software.

MODALapp by Modal Electronics
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/modalap ... 51804?mt=8

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AnX wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:58 pmi agree, but these tiny things are not something i would like to be fumbling with on stage
Thank Dog for MIDI, eh? It only needs to be plugged into my mixer, then into the Overhub, and switched on. After that I don't have to touch it on stage if I don't want to. As it's not really the kind of instrument I'm likely to use for solos or anything, that's probably how it will be used. I might play the occasional fat pad from its keyboard or a nasty sequenced rhythm, just for the hell of it, but that's about it.

That's what I love about these recent purchases I've made - they are only slightly more expensive than a good VSTi and I can use them in a similar way and not feel like I've wasted my money on them, whereas previously it was way too hard to justify spending a grand on something I would only use on one or two songs live and nowhere else.
AnX wrote: Sat Apr 20, 2019 7:59 amnobody is going to listen to a synth in isolation for 12 hours in a park or airport
That's probably why it has an on/off switch but I tell ya, when we played in Germany in 2017, we spent 6 hours stuck in Singapore airport after our flight was cancelled and another 11 hours in Heathrow waiting for a new connection to Berlin. Add in the 20 hours we spent in the air and I could easily have burned through two sets of batteries and still watched a few in-flight movies and read a book. It would have been nice to have the option of whipping out a little synth and having a bit of fun with it.

I even came up with all the main elements of one of the songs on our third album on my Korg microX while sitting in the Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong airport. Of course, I had to sit by a power outlet to manage that and I only had the microX with me because I'd bought it that day.
we'll see how you get on with it and the uno after you have sold them and bought the next big thing, like you did with the other stuff :lol:
That's just how it works for me - I get something new, it's exciting and it inspires me but after a while I've sucked it dry and I get bored, so I buy something else. That's even more pronounced for me with VSTi - all the VSTi we've used on the album we just finished were things we'd bought in 2017-18 but I've already moved on to a whole new raft of VSTi for whatever we do next. As far as I'm concerned Legend, Massive, DUNE and a few others have been sucked dry so I've spent another grand or so on new VSTi. I've spent a lot more on software over the past two or three years than I have on hardware, that's for sure.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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I did something over Easter that I had not done in 20 years or so - I did a song in hardware. OK, I cheated a bit and used drums on my PC and I obviously used the PC for sequencing but all the synth sounds came from hardware. It was a song from our last album that I had used when I was trying out Bitwig. I chose it then because all the synth sounds in it come from Orion's Wasp synth, so it was a challenge to see how I could manage without Wasp. That made it the perfect candidate here, too, which gave me the added advantage of comparing the two processes. Not only did I do a much better job with the hardware but it was a much faster process, mostly because I could copy/paste within Orion where I'd had to export MIDI out of it and import it into Bitwig.

The results were really encouraging. It makes me feel that we would have no trouble doing a whole set this way, especially once we add in my bandmate's Moog Sub 37 and my Analog Keys (which is at his place ATM). I'll compile the original and the new versions and put it up tonight so you can compare.

The only issue I had during the process was, unfortunately, with Skulpt. It doesn't respond to program change messages. Actually, I don't think that's completely true because what it seems to do is scramble the current patch when it receives a program change message, like it's interpreting it as a bunch of other commands. It's very consistent, it always ends up sounding the same, but it's never the preset I had dialled up. It's frustrating but I can deal with it for the moment because once you get the right sound in there, by manually selecting a patch, everything else is great. I've had to put a filter on it to keep the bottom end in check, it's absolutely monstrous.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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After a few days a few issues have started to crop up. Most persistent of them is that it responds very weirdly to program change messages. Instead of changing the patch, it scrambles the currently loaded preset. It's an easy fix, you just load/reload the preset you want after you press play, but it's pretty annoying. I've raised the issue with Modal's support but they haven't been able to offer a fix. I was trying few different configurations to try and resolve the issue - bypassing the Overhub, using DIN MIDI instead of USB, but the problem persisted.

While I was doing that, other issues cropped up. It locked me out of the patch I needed to reset and later it stopped responding to MIDI. Both situations were easily fixed with a restart but these are problems I've not had with my other hardware synths at all. It's taken some of the shine off Skulpt. It's not yet enough to have me thinking about returning it but they are definitely issues that potential owners need to be aware of.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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BONES wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:19 am After a few days a few issues have started to crop up. Most persistent of them is that it responds very weirdly to program change messages. Instead of changing the patch, it scrambles the currently loaded preset. It's an easy fix, you just load/reload the preset you want after you press play, but it's pretty annoying. I've raised the issue with Modal's support but they haven't been able to offer a fix. I was trying few different configurations to try and resolve the issue - bypassing the Overhub, using DIN MIDI instead of USB, but the problem persisted.

While I was doing that, other issues cropped up. It locked me out of the patch I needed to reset and later it stopped responding to MIDI. Both situations were easily fixed with a restart but these are problems I've not had with my other hardware synths at all. It's taken some of the shine off Skulpt. It's not yet enough to have me thinking about returning it but they are definitely issues that potential owners need to be aware of.
more here

viewtopic.php?p=7377232#p7377232

anyone contact the dev?

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Yeah but absolutely nothing syncs to Orion, I don't think it even outputs a sync signal, so I wasn't worried about that at all. You just have to save the correct tempo with the patch and everything plays properly together. I answered your question in the post you quoted unnecessarily.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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I contacted the dev with no help at all, they tried to tell me it was my usb issue, even though my sub37 and Neutron and IPads sync perfectly using the same USB ports. I even phoned them but nothing.

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