TC Electronic M2000

The M2000 takes much of the technology behind its Danish manufacturer's professional flagship, the M5000, and re‑packages it with less flexibility but a much lower price tag. Paul White finds out whether it's barking up the right tree...

When it comes to effects units, everybody wants everything — we want ease of use, we want to be able to process more than one signal at a time with different heart‑stopping effects, and we want it cheap. Faced with this seemingly impossible task, a unit which delivers two out of three isn't bad — but to find out which two, you'll have to read on!

TC Electronic have a well‑deserved reputation for building serious professional effects with a long life and exemplary sound quality; the reason you don't see many TC reviews is that their best‑known products, such as the 2290 delay unit, have been around for years, and are still bang up to date, thanks to TC's policy of software upgradability rather than planned obsolescence.

The M2000 is a mid‑price effects unit benefiting from the technology that went into TC's flagship M5000 — a cursory glance at its features confirm that it's trying to muscle in on Lexicon's PCM80 territory. While the M2000 doesn't have the software flexibility of the M5000, the algorithms have much in common, and there's a memory card expansion slot to increase its potential.

Architecture

Essentially, the M2000 can be considered as two separate effects engines in a single box, both of which feed a common stereo output. Each engine can generate a single, high‑quality effect, and a number of routing options are provided so that the two engines can be used separately or in combination. A key feature of this unit is its very simple operating system, whereby a pair of up/down cursors are used to navigate through a vertical parameter list for each effect engine or effect combination, and parameter values are changed using a rotary data‑entry wheel. The LCD window displays a plain text list of the parameters plus their numerical values while editing, or patch names for both 'engines' while in patch select mode.

Operation is simplicity itself, but even so, TC have emulated Lexicon's dual‑complexity 'Go or Pro' operating system, so that you can decide whether you want access to just the most important patch parameters or everything you can get your hands on. There's even on‑line help for inveterate manual haters — pressing the Shift and I/O buttons together brings up a concise help text relating to the currently‑displayed functions.

One look at the back of the machine confirms its professional provenance — the audio ins and outs are on balanced XLRs, and there's a choice of AES/EBU or S/PDIF digital ins and outs for those determined to stay in the digital domain. MIDI In, Out and Thru sockets are provided for remote patch change, real‑time control and SysEx data dumping, while a momentary‑type pedal input provides a simple means of control for non‑MIDI musicians.

The effects themselves are startlingly clean — one of the hallmarks of TC equipment.

The analogue signal path is 20‑bit, 64 times oversampling, providing a dynamic range of better than 96dB. Digital users can work at up to 24‑bit resolution, with a choice of 32kHz, 44.1kHz, or 48kHz sampling rates. The frequency response extends from 10Hz to 20kHz within 0.2dB, and the total harmonic distortion is a mere 0.008% (1kHz, +10dB). Unusually, there's no physical input gain control, which I find rather unfriendly, but I guess it's all done in the name of keeping the technical specs as high as possible. You can change the input gain over a useful range via the parameter menu, and that includes adding up to 6dB of gain to the digital input, so if you're processing an under‑recorded signal from DAT, you can bump up the level without having to go analogue.

The metering on the M2000 is better than you'll find on many effects boxes, with a 7‑stage peak meter on each input. A further row of LEDs indicates the sample rate, presence of a plug‑in card, level overload, MIDI In, Tempo, and Morphing. The latter feature is a kind of smooth crossfade between the two effects engines, and so can only be used when single effects are required either side of the morph.

Initially, the front of this 1U‑high box looks a little crowded in the button department, but a closer look reveals six columns of four buttons, each column having its own dedicated purpose. First comes the Setup column, which deals with I/O, routing, levels and utility items including MIDI setup. LEDs fitted to these switches also double as indicators for Help, the on‑board tuner, auto level setting and the MIDI Monitor (see box 'Routing & MIDI' for more about these features).

The next two rows of buttons relate to effect engines 1 and 2 and are identical. Each engine has buttons for Recall, Store, Edit, and Bypass, all of which do pretty much as their names suggest. Buttons with the same functions make an appearance in the Combined 1+2 section, which deals with dual effects patches, and the next row provides four user‑selectable snapshots, which may be used to provide instant access to any four combinations of effects. Finally, there's a row of buttons for 'control' functions, which includes buttons labelled Shift, OK, Cursor and Tap, and a rotary Adjust knob.

Patch Organisation

As delivered, the M2000 comes with 128 normal, or single‑engine, presets and a further 128 combination presets that use both engines. A total of 256 user patch locations are also provided — 128 normal and 128 combination (a combination patch can include any two normal effects, plus level and routing data). Further patches can be stored on a Type 1 PCMCIA card with a minimum capacity of 64K. In common with most other digital effects units, there doesn't appear to be a way of using MIDI Bank messages to switch between the preset and user banks, or between single and combination programs.

The four snapshot memories each enable you to store whichever patch setup is current when the 'store snapshot' operation is executed, for later recall. This applies whether you're accessing two normal patches or one combination patch. All routing data is saved as part of the snapshot, and each of the saved snapshots can be recalled by a single push of any of the four Snapshot buttons.

Cans of beer these days might come with a widget, but the TC M2000 comes with its own Wizard. Wizard is one of those computer buzzwords for 'electronic helper', and Windows 95 users will probably be familiar with the term. The M2000's Wizard is simply a system of organising presets by tagging them with certain attributes, database style, so that you can group your effects by algorithm type, instrument and category (Gentle, Normal or Extra). You can search for a preset meeting your requirements by selecting from a list of alternatives in each of the three groups; the Adjust wheel then lets you scroll through the patches that have been shortlisted. The Lexicon PCM90 uses a similar system for categorising reverb patches.

Each patch features a dry/effect mix parameter, but when you're using the unit via an effects send and return loop, you're almost certainly going to want 100% effect without any of the dry signal. To make this easy to achieve, you can select 100% in the I/O page, or for live use, where you want to use the individual patch mix settings, you can select Mix. This is a simple but welcome idea that more effects units would do well to incorporate. The choice of analogue or digital input is also made on the I/O page, as are the digital data format settings. If you select analogue, both the digital and analogue outputs are 'dithered' to 20‑bit. Selecting S/PDIF as the main output will cause the signal to be dithered to 16‑bit for use with DAT machines and similarly specified systems. (Dithering, if you haven't come across it, is a process which involves adding a very low level of pseudo‑random noise to a digital signal in order to reduce low‑level distortion and extend dynamic range.)

The Level page allows the user to choose between +4dBu and ‑10dBv operation, and it's here that gain may also be applied to either the analogue or digital inputs. The range of digital gain is up to +6dB, as mentioned earlier, while the analogue inputs have a 24dB range on the +4 setting, and a 26dB range on the ‑10 setting. Like the Alesis Midiverb 4, the M2000 includes an auto gain mode, whereby the machine 'listens' to a few seconds of audio and then sets its own input gain, leaving around 6dB of headroom.

Engine Room

Editing single effects is most easily achieved by picking a patch which uses the algorithm you're interested in, then editing the parameters to suit your specific requirements. Dynamic morphing can be used with the Preset Glide routing option to fade from one effect into another, and the fade can be made dependent on the input signal level, using a conventional threshold approach. This allows, for example, a vocal treatment with a long reverb time to be used during pauses or quiet passages, with a shorter reverb taking over when the signal is above the threshold. The relative level of the two effects can be set by the user, as can the direction of the morph. Combination programs are always based upon two existing 'normal' patches, but the choice of routing options provides a reasonable degree of flexibility.

The algorithms themselves cover Reverb (Hall, Room, Plate, Ambience, and Gated); Chorus; Flanger; Delay; Phaser; Multi Pitch Shift (up to six voices); EQ; Tremolo; Stereo Spatial Control; and Dynamics, the latter covering compression, limiting, gating and de‑essing. There are none of the fancy resonators found in Lexicon's PCM80 and no intelligent (auto‑harmonising) pitch‑shifting. I could find no menu for creating multi‑tapped delays, and the EQ is a separate effects block, so you can only use it in conjunction with one other effect. In an ideal world, parametric EQ would be included in each of the effect algorithms; as it is, the tonal change you can access from within an effect algorithm is relatively limited.

The number of effect editing parameters available depends on whether you choose basic or expert mode, though from what I can see, the expert parameters always come further down the parameter list anyway, so there's little real benefit in not leaving expert mode on all the time — unless you're a real parameterphobe. As an example of what to expect in terms of numbers of parameters, Reverb offers 25 user‑accessible parameters in expert mode, or just 10 in basic mode.

Clean Machine

The effects themselves are startlingly clean — one of the hallmarks of TC equipment and to be expected. On an artistic level, they offer few truly new possibilities, but once again, the M2000's quality helps present familiar effects in a new light — except for the pitch‑shifting, which is as 'yodelly' as any budget unit I've used. It works beautifully for detuning effects, especially the 6‑voice detune, which creates a wonderfully warm, chorus‑like effect, but ask it to shift by whole semitones and the result is pretty unusable except for special effects.

Reverb algorithms are perhaps the most subjective to assess, but in this instance, I had the opportunity to compare the M2000 directly with Lexicon's PCM80 and 90, which was very educational. The M2000 doesn't lose any ground on smoothness or noise performance, and on some of the longer reverb settings, the M2000 comes quite close to the PCM80. I don't think the M2000 quite matches Lexicon's ability to create the illusion of a convincing smaller room or hall, but the reverbs are still very good indeed, with a smooth and musical character.

The delay and modulation effects are as vice‑free as you could want, and though you don't get such sophisticated routing, feedback and modulation options as in the PCM80, the operating system is undoubtedly more straightforward because of this — those who want instant gratification will probably approve. Personally, I think TC could have gone a little further, as all the effects are presented in a pretty basic form — there's no multi‑tapped chorus, flanging has no frills, and the delay is simple, with feedback up to 1.2S. Filtering is included in the algorithms to provide roll‑off in the feedback paths, for example, and the reverb algorithms include modulation, rather like Lexicon's Spin and Wander parameters.

The dual programs allow you to combine any two effects. In many cases, this will be a delay/modulation effect plus reverb, though you can combine two mod effects if you have a proclivity for that sort of thing. These programs work fine, though my comment about not being able to use two effects plus serious EQ still stand. You can also combine two reverbs, though the outcome isn't always what you might expect. Sometimes you achieve something that's subjectively greater than the sum of its parts, while at other times, the reverbs ring against each other, introducing an unnatural metallic timbre. Because both the dry and effected signals are digitised before being sent to the output, there is a very small propagation delay, probably in the region of a millisecond or two. This is far too small to cause any timing problems, but it does mean that if you forget to set the mix to 100%, the dry sound through the mixer will combine with the slightly delayed dry sound from the M2000, causing a phasey timbre. The manual warns about this and, to be fair, any device that digitises audio delays it by a small amount.

Summary

I have to admit to being in two minds about this unit. Though it isn't the most sexy‑looking effects processor on the market, I have to applaud its straightforward user interface and its exceedingly high audio quality. Having a high‑resolution, professional digital output on a product of this price is fairly unusual, and 20‑bit capability is even more impressive. Even so, the quoted dynamic range is only a little over 96dB, which equates to a theoretically perfect 16‑bit system, and is only around 6dB better than most good 16‑bit systems achieve in practice — a perfect 20‑bit system could go as high as 120dB on paper. The reverb algorithms have to be commended for their smooth and natural character — they're overshadowed only by the big Lexicon units and even then, they aren't disgraced in any way.

I said I was in two minds about the M2000, because I can't help but think that the effects are all a trifle 'safe'. I'll admit that most of the time, you'll need bread‑and‑butter effects, and the M2000 delivers these as cleanly and smoothly as you could hope for, but a lot of potential creative power has been allowed to slip away in the quest for user‑friendliness. I can't fault the M2000 for what it does, and its only physical shortcoming is the lack of an input gain control knob, but although the reverbs are excellent, the delay and modulation effects don't really excite me. Then again, no‑one ever said that a first‑class, professional tool has to be exciting — and the M2000 is without doubt a very professional tool.