Welcome back Cobalt.

[MachFront]

Wow!
There were so very many times over the past few years I kicked myself over and over for not buying this when initially available.
Thank you for your generosity, sir!
And thank you for making such a nice synth. Sounds wonderful. I'm a total dork for mid-80s sounds.

[ENV1]

Anyone notice that Cobalt has minimoog-style VCF Envelope behavior?

Quite surprising, considering there are even minimoog emulations that dont have it.

First time i see this in a non-minimoog plugin...



BTW, my half-a-mind to make a new skin for Cobalt turned into a good mind shortly after i knew that it is a definite keeper.

So i kinda blitz-skinned him. (Probably the fastest skin i ever did.)

click for fullsize

[Chris-S]

Nice. Do one has to use resedit to install?

[ENV1]

Nice. Do one has to use resedit to install?

Well, i was going to provide the usual instructions how to install it with Explorer Suite, (drag DLL in to see embedded PNG folder then swap images), but now that you mention it, since the synth is free and has no copy protection i suppose i could just as well provide DLLs with the images already installed, but that would of course require Mr. Sanfords OK since i obviously cant just do that without his consent.

So i say lets wait a little and see what he says if/when he returns to this thread. To me it makes no difference, and since theres only 5 images to replace it wouldnt be a big deal for you either if you have to do it yourselves.

[Yeager]

First off all thank you Leslie for this amazing synth

Second, a question : why is there so much tonal and volume difference between the poly and the mono mode ?

F.I. load preset "Slap Bass" , play a little, then turn it to mono mode... sounds like a completely different beast

Here is an example : First part poly, second (same patch but) mono :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/862 ... lyMono.mp3

Especially the end is very different ( All notes are the same velocity).

[Leslie Sanford]

but now that you mention it, since the synth is free and has no copy protection i suppose i could just as well provide DLLs with the images already installed, but that would of course require Mr. Sanfords OK since i obviously cant just do that without his consent.

Hi, I have to say that I'm not comfortable with the DLLs being distributed outside of my website. I appreciate your asking, though.

[Aloysius]

I bought it back in the day. Good to see it available.

[Ingonator]

Now that Cobalt is free i actually really used it for the first time.

As in the description for the synth (ncluding that here at KVR) it is compared to a DW-8000 and ESQ-1 or at least to the architecture of those i just comnpared Cobalt to both my DW-8000 and ESQ-1.
Sound wise i could not find that Cobalt is really close which is especially true about the filter. I wss not able to recreate teh anlog warmth of the real analog filters in the DW-8000 and ESQ-1 and teh basic sound of teh filter also seems to be quite different.

Another difference is that both of those hardware synths got enveloepes that go beyond ADSR with additional stages. The ESQ-1 has 4 envelope levels and times.

To emulate an ESQ-1 (or SQ-80) also a 3rd oscillator would be necessary, not to foprget that it has 3 LFOs and 4 envelopes (while Cobalt has 2 LFOs and 2 envelopes).
While Cobalt includes Sync (like i ne.g. the ESQ-1) it is missing a Ringmod to emulate that feature in the ESQ-1.
A simple Arpeggiator like in the DW-8000 seems to be missing too and this also offered to play all 8 voices at once in an Unison mode which i do not see in Cobalt.

Both the DW-8000 and ESQ-1 offer using aftertouch as a mod source for multiple parameters (vibrato, Cutoff and volume in th DW-8000) and while the ESQ-1 has no aftertouch in the keyboard it coudl receive aftertouch and has it available in the mod sources (the SQ-80 also had built-in aftertouch with the keyboard). In Cobalt using aftertouch only seems to be available for filter Cutoff.

A special feature in the ESQ-1 was that besides the main VCA (which could also do panning) it had 3 additional Amps for each Osc and in combination with the 4 envelopes you could have a differnt volume envelope for all 3 Oscs.

Another synth that Cobalt was compared to in the description was a Kawai K3 and while i do not own this Cobalt does not seem to offer an option for additive waveform editing like in the K3.

What is also a bit confusing and/or misleading for me are the "FM1" and "FM2" section for modulation.
As those only offer envelopes and LFOs as mod sources there is no FM at all with those. As the LFOs end at 20 Hz there is also no audio rate modulation with those. Waldorf Largo has those "FM" drop-down menus too biu this offers all 3 Oscs as sources to, also in the filter.


I do not want to say that Cobalt is actually bad on it's own (and compared to the hardware synths has some advanced faetures like PWM, multimode filter and effects) but those comparisons to the DW-8000, ESQ-1 and K3 are a bit misleading IMO. Besides that i got a bunch of other synths i would prefer both sound and feature wise. Both sound and feature wise it also does not sem to be a proper replacement for my DW-8000 and ESQ-1 (while as an ESQ-1 emulation there is also SQ-8L and i found a few wavetable synths that could soudn comparable).

BTW i have not checked how close the waveforms in Cobalt are to those in the 3 hardware synths.

[brainzistor]

Now that Cobalt is free i actually really used it for the first time.

As in the description for the synth (ncluding that here at KVR) it is compared to a DW-8000 and ESQ-1 or at least to the architecture of those i just comnpared Cobalt to both my DW-8000 and ESQ-1.
Sound wise i could not find that Cobalt is really close which is especially true about the filter........

I usually respect your opinions, but it clearly says that Cobalt is INSPIRED by early 80s synths:

Cobalt is a VSTi software synthesizer inspired by many of the digital synthesizers from the 1980s.

which doesn't make it an emulation of those synths which were more than obviously mentioned as references, not something that Cobalt was trying to emulate 100%.

Why would you put it in a 1v1 scenario, it doesn't make any sense.
Take it for what it is.

[Ingonator]

Now that Cobalt is free i actually really used it for the first time.

As in the description for the synth (ncluding that here at KVR) it is compared to a DW-8000 and ESQ-1 or at least to the architecture of those i just comnpared Cobalt to both my DW-8000 and ESQ-1.
Sound wise i could not find that Cobalt is really close which is especially true about the filter........

I usually respect your opinions, but it clearly says that Cobalt is INSPIRED by early 80s synths:

Cobalt is a VSTi software synthesizer inspired by many of the digital synthesizers from the 1980s.

which doesn't make it an emulation of those synths which were more than obviously mentioned as references, not something that Cobalt was trying to emulate 100%.

Why would you put it in a 1v1 scenario, it doesn't make any sense.
Take it for what it is.

Well in the other thread where someone asked for synths that could repace SQ-8L (or the ESQ-1/SQ-80 synths it is based on) or could go beyond that someone mentioned Cobalt as a possible replacement so there indeed seems to be some confusing about this. Due to that i did comparison myself (the results posted above) and i could not confirm taht Cobalt is a replacement for both ESQ-1 and a DW-8000 (while feature wise it would be closer to a DW-8000). FWIW I compared a bunch of other softsynths i own to the ESQ-1 and at least concerning the filter sound i found a few that seem to be close (closely matching the feature set is another story).

[whyterabbyt]

Well in the other thread where someone asked for synths that could repace SQ-8L (or the ESQ-1/SQ-80 synths it is based on) or could go beyond that someone mentioned Cobalt as a possible replacement so there indeed seems to be some confusing about this.

No, there's no confusion about whether or not its an emulation of something, nor was there any necessity of proving that its not an emulation of something it was never claimed to be an emulation of.

The main confusion seems to be you thinking that someone suggesting it as a possible
replacement is a claim that its an emulation.

[Ingonator]

In any case you could see my post above as a kind of description of differences between Cobalt and ESQ-1 + DW-8000.

FWIW i do see Cobalt more as a fully digital synth, not as a digital/analog hybrid. For that the filter does not sound analog enough for my taste.
BTW like the filter in Cobalt that in the ESQ-1 does not self-oscillate while that in the DW-8000 does.

An interesting option to actually get a digital/analog hybrid based on Cobalt would be to combine it with the FX version of The Legend.

[Aloysius]

Two thing I never liked about the Plugin.

1) The GUI is too dark.
2) I've always hated the way the GUI loads square by square. It looks cheap.

Otherwise, I like it. I liked it so much, as I said, I bought it back in the day.

[GaryG]

Two thing I never liked about the Plugin.

1) The GUI is too dark.
2) I've always hated the way the GUI loads square by square. It looks cheap.

1) Agree though it's easily remedied in ten minutes with Resource Hacker if you're so inclined. I just lightened the text up a bitand it's now more readable to my eyes.
2) Never experienced that, so it loads slowly, you can see each bit being drawn?

[Aloysius]

Yeah. I've used it on two (maybe three) different computers and it always 'draws' the same way. Block by block. It's quick enough but noticible. I've never seen any other Plugin behave this way.