13 thoughts on “Modal 001 Synthesizer Overview & Demo”

1. Quote of the Day: “Most mono synths usually have just one voice” (1:00) 😉

2. The Modal synths sound great. I love what they are doing with NCO’s. They provide a great way to have the variety of waveforms a digital oscillator can provide without aliasing and everything’s discrete so the voices get this rich sound to them. As long as I can poly chain the 002r to the 001 this synth will be mine.

   1. I was curious about that too (poly chain). I could get the 001, and the 002r and have 14 (or even 12, i wouldnt mind) voices and still save like $600. I was so curious that I wrote an email to modal and here’s what they said…

      “Thanks for your email and interest in Modal and our synthesisers.

      One of the things in development at present is the ability to integrate multiple ModalOS products into a network, or cluster.

      At a simple level initially, this will enable you to say “there are a total of 14 voices on midi channel 7” – where both a 001 (2 voices) and 002r (12 voices) are both set up to receive on channel 7. The internal voice allocation engine will then work with this and provide the poly chaining. I’d hope this was released in an update within the next four to six weeks, so it’s a high priority for us. This will be joined with the ability to switch the front panel of a 001 or 002 to control a 002r, rather than the internal voices.

      Going beyond this we plan to implement polychaining on a per channel level within a multi-timbral setup (or Performance as we refer to them). So you may have a 001 keyboard, with a multi setup with a split, bass played on an internal sound on the lower half of the keyboard, but the lead pad sound of four voices being played on the right hand of the split, with one voice coming from the 001 internally and the other three being provided by a 002r, using one channel of a multi-timbral performance, still leaving 5 voices (on an 8 voice 002r) or 9 voices (on a 12 voice 002r) to be used for other parts, perhaps controlled by the internal sequencer or an external DAW, or another keyboard etc.

      We have even more functionality planned, to do with the way ModalOS devices detect each other and allow you to build clusters, but for now, we will shortly be implementing simple poly-chaining, but we plan to make it do a lot more in the future.”

      sounds like a green light to me

3. he said 2200 € ?!

   1. “we hope its gona be a good price” yeah haha… watch as the orders flood in heh…

4. I haven’t seen a good Modal product demo yet. It’s a shame really, because from the specs. of these machines I should be saving my (many) pennies to get one. The much cheaper MFB Dominion 1 demos leave this thing standing at the moment…even the JD-XA demos (as aesthetically Star Wars as it is) make both the 002 & 008 sound flat. Maybe it’s all just about build quality. Could somebody send me a link to a Modal product demo that I might actually like.

5. I was almost expecting it to be more expensive than an Oberheim Two Voice, thinking about the pricing of the 008. It is pleasant to have something not to complain about.

6. I like these guys. They seem to be doing a lot of similar things to DSI but with more discrete components. To be honest though, I have to agree with Vince. At least, I can say that I haven’t heard anything that I couldn’t do on either my Prophet 12 or my Pro 2 which are still awesome, sound great, well built, and generally less expensive.

   I’m always excited by new companies, and these guys look like they wanna build up to a quality rather than down to a price. I want to see and hear more demos and play one in person before I make a real judgement call.

7. For godssakes, PLAY the darned thing and stop listing the specs. There’s no questioning that it has a BASICALLY good sound and they’re smart to offer a couple of lesser models as well as the larger ones, but after all the fanfare, no one has really wrung it out so a PLAYER can get a better idea of its viability. That’s a double whammy when no Guitar Center will ever carry a boutique beast like this in any form. Step through all of the presets and *let* *us* “HEAR* *it*. Only presenting a bass sound that numerous other instruments can achieve with a much smaller price tag is not a good sales point.

8. That’s true, Vince. I wanted the 002 to be THE next big thing, I wanted to fall in love with it. I wanted to justify spending so much on this synth. But all the demos I heard were so mediocre that I’ll stick to my Waldorf Microwave 1 instead. Even the Sledge demos are better than these. I’m sure it can sound amazing, but they really need to get some nice patches to show. Please Modal, show us how well your synths can cover bread and butter sounds first. To me that shows the quality of a synth’s sound. Some Oberheim like brass patches, some ppg like bells, etc. I hope the 008 gets some better demos.

9. Very expensive for such a digital sounding synth… I couldn’t believe to my ears when i tested it at the musikmesse. But it’s good looking and easy to use.

10. Hmmm? It would be more cost effective to smash one of these at the end of each show than continuing to smash Prophet 12s.

    Although, the part in the show where I pour gas on the panel and light it on fire might not be as good on the white panel.

11. This is by far the worst demo/interview I have ever seen,looks like both these guys no nothing about synth . shame.