TC Electronic M3000

Mike Collins provides some early reflections on TC Electronic's latest reverb unit and effects processor.

TC Electronic's new effects unit represents a new approach to reverb design based on their 'virtual space simulator' technology (see 'VSS Technology' box at the end of this review). The M3000 offers a mammoth selection of 250 single and 50 combined presets in ROM, including many of the favourites from TC's previous units. You won't run out of memory slots to store your own presets very easily either, as you not only get an internal RAM bank for up to 250 single and 50 combined user‑memories, but you can also store the same number again onto a standard PCMCIA card — very useful for taking your favourite setups from studio to studio.

The new algorithms offered are the VSS Reverb and Gate, along with TC's CORE (Coefficient Optimised Room Emulation) Reverb, Reverb 3, Delay, Pitch, EQ, Expander, Compressor, Chorus/Flanger, Tremolo/Panner, Phase and De‑Esser. Like the existing M2000, the M3000 features two separate processors which you can use in serial, parallel, dual‑input, dual‑mono, linked and pre‑glide modes. The M3000 also features 24‑bit resolution A‑D and D‑A converters, along with 16‑ and 20‑bit dithering for output to devices working at these lower resolutions.

Front & Rear

Breaking with the more conventional black‑with‑grey‑buttons look, the M3000 comes in a 1U rackmount case with an attractive grey metallic finish — and black buttons. From the left‑hand side, the front panel sports a slot for a PCMCIA card just underneath the power on/off button, with a display area to the right of this encompassing a pair of LED PPM meters, a column of LED indicators for overload, sample‑rate and MIDI activity, and a parameter display area. This was the one feature I felt let the unit down somewhat — the parameter display is not really large enough to do justice to the number of parameters which can be controlled. It can also be a little difficult to read from an angle, although you can adjust the viewing angle from the Utility page if you are going to be looking from a particular angle a lot of the time. And, to be fair, the display is about as large as is practical on a 1U unit with as many buttons to accommodate as there are on the M3000.

Talking of buttons, there are six main groups of four buttons each, occupying the main part of the front panel to the right of the parameter display. The first column of buttons lets you set up the inputs and outputs, select the routing mode, adjust the input and output levels, and control various utility functions. a particularly useful feature here is the ability to alter the digital input gain — to raise the level of an incoming signal from a DAT which has been recorded too low, for example. The next two columns provide the recall and store buttons for the presets, and the Edit mode and bypass buttons for Engines 1 and 2, as the dual processors are known. The Recall and Store buttons each have a second function when the Shift button is activated — to recall a Wizard (a 'helper' to suggest a selection of suitable presets for your application) and to delete a preset. The next column lets you control the combined presets — which use both processors — and a further column of smaller buttons lets you quickly store and recall any of these combined presets. Buttons are provided in the last column to let you confirm operations, Shift to the secondary functions, and move the cursor between parameters or page up and down. One further button is provided to let you tap a tempo for the delays, while a large parameter‑adjustment wheel takes up the last bit of space at the far right of the front panel.

TC Electronic M3000 rear panel.

The rear panel has an additional power switch, an IEC mains socket, a pair of balanced XLR analogue inputs, a pair of balanced XLR analogue outputs, optical input and output sockets switchable between ADAT and S/PDIF formats, a phono connector for word clock (a phono‑to‑BNC adaptor is supplied), a pair of XLRs for AES‑EBU and a pair of phonos for S/PDIF digital input and output, plus MIDI In, Out and Thru connectors. All the audio connectors are gold‑plated, and any combination of (or all) the digital outputs can be used simultaneously. The M3000's internal clock is switchable between 44.1 and 48kHz operation. There is also a quarter‑inch jack for an external control input, via which you can connect a momentary pedal to the M3000. You can use the pedal as a bypass switch for either or both of the processing engines, or to let you tap a tempo.

The User Interface

The M3000's user interface is very straightforward, providing two edit modes — User and Expert. In User mode, you are only presented with half a dozen or so of the most important parameters you will need to edit, such as decay time. Expert mode, by contrast, provides a much larger number of parameters to control the effects, so you can play with early reflections or modulation settings to your heart's content, for instance.

Setting delay tempos is easy as well. When you hit the Tap button, up comes a parameter display showing the tempo in bpm; you can tap on the button or rotate the Adjust wheel to set the tempo. As well as delay tempos, you can also control the reverb decay and the chorus, flanger, phaser or tremolo speeds, and you can sync the M3000 to an incoming MIDI clock signal by simply holding the Tap button for 3 seconds. Another neat touch is the MIDI monitor window which lets you display incoming program changes, control changes, SysEx and notes.

The 'normal' display window, which you can think of as the M3000's 'home page', shows either the Recall Display for one of the effect Engines or the Combined Display, which you are returned to whenever you exit from any other display. This display holds a few of the most important parameters for each of the two engines with Engine 1 in the upper half and Engine 2 in the lower half of the screen. To recall a preset you just hit the recall key for Engine 1 or 2 and scroll through the presets using the Adjust wheel, pressing OK when you find what you want. Obviously it could take some time to scroll through all the factory presets, so TC have provided a useful index to these which you can bring up on screen by holding down the Recall key for a few seconds. This reminds you which preset types occupy which preset positions — so, for instance, you can see at a glance that the Gated Reverbs are in presets 205‑211. Combined presets, which are also available, consist of a specific presets in each Engine, with a defined Routing between these which is shown in the display.

I found more or less the perfect settings for a jazzy sax solo with a preset called 'Smokey Sax', and when I turned to the drums there was 'Puk Drum Ambience' just beckoning me!

But what if you are not sure which effects might suit your purpose best? In this case, the Wizard will help you out by suggesting a bunch of presets for you to try. Just press the Shift key before hitting any of the Recall buttons and the display will show the Reverb Wizard. Select various search criteria and the M3000 will choose a selection of the presets which correspond to these criteria. So, for example, you can choose between Music or Post‑production applications, then select the type of instrument or environment you want to work with, such as drums or ambience, and finally select the size of the reverb. At the bottom of the screen the display shows the number of presets corresponding to these criteria which have been found, and you can scroll through the list of these much more quickly than having to search the entire list of presets. I found this feature very useful — marvellously simple to operate and allowing for very fast initial choices.

Setups

The Setups section has four buttons which take you to the Input/Output page, the Routing page, the Levels page, and the Utilities/MIDI settings page. The I/O page is very easy to use. You can see everything at a glance and make your choice of analogue and digital formats, clocking, sync and dither settings, and whether the optical connectors will deliver S/PDIF‑ or ADAT‑format audio. The Levels page also lets you see everything at a glance: you can select between +4dBV and ‑10dBu for input and output independently, or fine‑tune these levels in 1dB steps to match to just about anything. You can even boost the digital input level by up to 6dB. The Utilities and MIDI settings don't allow you to see everything at a glance, and scrolling can get a little tedious. Still, everything you need is there, from the display viewing angle to a PIN code setting which you can use as a security lock for the unit.

The Routing page is also extremely simple to use, letting you choose between the six different ways of hooking the two Engines up, but deserves a more detailed explanation:

• Serial mode is a stereo in/out routing giving you two independent effects in the same signal path, with the output from Engine 1 fed to the input of Engine 2. So, for example, you could connect a de‑esser, a compressor or chorus in Engine 1 and a reverb or delay in Engine 2.
• Parallel mode is another stereo in/out routing, where both engines work as stereo effects and both their stereo outputs are mixed into one stereo output signal. With this routing, the M3000 can be used as two parallel effects on the same stereo source. You may also set the I/O menu to left‑only input to get two independent stereo out effects from a single send on your mixer.
• In Parallel mode you can also use the Dynamic Morphing function to morph between the two Engines' output according to your input level, allowing quick, seamless effect changes. You could, for instance, use this to increase the room size of the reverb from verse to chorus if the vocalist sings more softly in the verse and more loudly in the chorus, by setting the threshold and speed of the effect appropriately.
• Dual‑Input or Split Mode is a dual mono in/stereo out routing. The left input is always routed to Engine 1 while the right input is routed to Engine 2. This allows you to set up two different effects each with separate inputs by connecting aux 1 from your mixer to left in and aux 2 to right in. Now you have access to two separate effects with a common stereo output, and you can set the individual preset output volumes to get the desired balance between these effects. With this routing you only need one set of return channels on your mixer.
• Dual Mono mode lets you split the M3000 into two independent mono effects units using left in/out for Engine 1 and right in/out to connect Engine 2.
• In Linked mode, the two Engines will link together to perform true stereo operation, one on the left channel and one on the right. This means that the preset in Engine 1 will be copied into Engine 2 and the edit pages will lock together.
• With Preset Glide routing, the M3000 will perform preset changes by crossfading the current effect and the new preset with a glide time which you can set using the Utility menu. This gives you a very smooth change between effects — allowing, for instance, a delay to keep repeating while a chorus is being faded in.

The Effects

Fancy technical features are not going to make you buy the M3000 if you don't like the 'sounds' — which, for many people, will mean the presets — and I don't think anyone is going to be disappointed here. TC have prepared presets to get you started in just about any situation. For instance, I found more or less the perfect settings for a jazzy sax solo with a preset called 'Smokey Sax', and when I turned to the drums there was 'Puk Drum Ambience' just beckoning me! This is an emulation of the sound of the drum room at Puk Studios in Denmark, renowned for sophisticated rock rather than for punk sounds.

Although the reverbs will be the M3000's main selling point, it does offer a wide range of other time‑based effects and dynamics processes.

The four basic reverb algorithms together offer an extremely wide range of reverb effects. The VSS Reverb and Gate algorithms have separately controllable parameters for the reverb itself (decay time, mix level and so forth), the early reflections (type, balance and so forth), the reverb tail (high, mid, low decay times and so forth), modulation of the reverb tail, and 'Space Modulation' which controls the way the sound moves around the room. These new algorithms are what make the M3000 stand apart from the competition for me, providing new levels of realism and offering wider ranges of effects than others. The CORE algorithm, on the other hand, is still very good at short to medium decay times, although it doesn't have the VSS algorithm's Expert layer with additional control parameters. Similarly, the Reverb‑3 algorithm is taken from the M5000 and is very good at medium decay times.

Although the reverbs will be the M3000's main selling point, it does offer a wide range of other time‑based effects and dynamics processes. The Delay effect allows delay settings up to 1350mS, with feedback, and offers damping of the higher frequencies being fed back, for a more natural‑sounding delay effect. The Pitch presets let you create six differently‑pitched 'voices' at the same time — yielding some pretty awesome chorus effects. The EQ programs are 3‑band parametric types with separate high and low shelving bands while the standard LFO‑based effects (Chorus, Flanger, Tremolo and Phaser) are all very useable in a variety of situations.

The dynamics algorithms include an Expander/Gate to reduce noise in the channel, a Compressor to keep the signal at a more constant level and a De‑esser for reducing the sibilant sounds from vocals. All these effects work well enough, although I won't be throwing away my dedicated dynamics processors just yet!

Conclusion

For me, the M3000 is TC's most exciting new product since the 2290 Sampler/Delay, and I feel sure it will be able to offer some serious competition to the popular Lexicon models — it is actually priced a little lower than the PCM 81 and 91. Of course, other companies make high quality multi‑effects processors too — Yamaha, Sony, Eventide, Alesis et al, all make excellent‑sounding units of this type — but when it comes to purely reverb, most listeners would agree that Lexicon have always been a cut above the opposition. The new TC unit is certainly of that same calibre and, I believe, even has the edge. Given that it also scores heavily on ease of use, it should prove to be a real winner.