TC Electronic M-300 Dual Engine Processor

This is the hard part. You definitly need the manual for this to get a good understanding of how the unit works. Once you understand, it's VERY easy to find the sound you are looking for. It probably took me a good hour to figure out the whole unit, but now its very easy. Would give it a 10 once you figure it out, but getting there takes a little bit of patience..so it gets an 8.

My Rig:

Guitar - Shure SLX Wireless unit - Korg DTR-1000 - Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier. I have the M300 in the effects loop of the Boogie, along with an exciter and a Boss Noise Suppressor. The Noise Gate is essential.

At first I was having trouble with background hiss. I originally had the M300 in the direct chain to the amp with the noise gate still in the FX loop, but once I put the M300 in the loop the noise went away. I was able to get more control over the tone and over the reverb than before. I re-fell in love with this unit (ya..i said re-fell...). The delays are brilliant...very warm and lush and you have great control over the timing. Tremolo is cool, but I only with they would have the Tap Tempo feature for the tremolo as well. Phasers are cool if used properly...and the reverbs at first were a bit noisy, but once again, once I moved the unit into the FX loop, I regained control over the reverb.

I play Alternative Metal music, and only use certain effects for songs...I dont use it a lot. This unit is perfect for that. I control the unit with a Boss MIDI selector. There is a bit of delay when switching between patches, but I dont care because in our music I never change effects during a song, so it doesnt bother me.

Very good. It's made of plastic, but mine is secured in a rack so its all good. I do gig without a back up.

Never had a problem.

Overall...a great unit. I think i've already gone into enough detail...haha

This unit is incredibly easy to use. I use it almost exclusively in my home hobby studio. The manual is small, wire-bound so it lays flat, and concise, yet thorough. Editing is a breeze with lots of knobs instead of menus, sub-menus, and sub-sub-menus (ala Lexicon et al.).

I find the sound quality to be the highlight of this unit. I especially like the dual-engine capability, which gives the user plenty of flexibility. I also find the "color" adjustment for the reverb engine to be very useful for dialing in the just the right tone. And, yes, this unit is very quiet, especially when you pay attention to all of the individual levels in your signal path.

Before buying this unit, I compared it side-by-side with several other units in the $180-400 price range from Lexicon, Alesis, and Digitech. I chose the M300 primarily for its sound quality in vocal applications and for its ease of use. I actually thought the comparable Lexicon model had some slightly nicer sounding reverb presets, but the stupid wall wart put it out of contention immediately.

Since buying it, I have a-b'ed it with my Behringer Virtulaizer Pro that I use with some of my synth modules and, of course, the M300 blows the Behringer away in terms of sound quality and noise. No surprise there.

I have not had this unit very long, but it certainly seems to be built solidly. If I still gigged, I would certainly use it without a backup. It seems to be more solid than the old ART and Digitech units that I spent 15 years or so gigging with.

I have not had a reason to contact a person at TC Electronic; however, I did download the user's manual from their website with no problem. The website contains a lot of useful information and everything I was looking for was easily found. I give them a 10 for letting me get what I need quickly online without having to call, be put on hold for 2 hours, talk to someone with no knowledge of the product or ability to speak English, etc. If you've ever tried to get an owner's manual from Roland's website or called Yamaha to order a replacement part, then you know exactly what I'm talking about, right?

I think the M300 is an outstanding effects unit, especially for the price. It is extremely easy to use thanks to knobs rather than menus, it sounds great and is very quiet, is very flexible due to the dual engines, and best of all - an INTERNAL POWER SUPPLY! All this for under $200. If it were stolen or lost, I'd have no problem affording a new one.

First of all i didnt read all the comments on this page. but i do own this thing so i thought i have to write some of my opinions.

In my view, This unit is very easy to use. Just turning the fx selectors (knobs) will select what type of fx u want. The parameters are then edited via other smaller knobs.
Saving and recalling presets r easy too.
"fx balance" and "dry&wet" at the left side lets u adjust the density of the fx but i found it less useful than having separate dry&wet adjustment. But however this is fine too...

I think the first fx engine (delays, chorus, etc.) is kinda same among the units of this price range. Different delay modes are cool to have. Compressor and deesser react well to exceeding freq. but i rearely use them.

The reverb engine is average for me. I am comparing the effects with vst reverbs and my behringer ub2222 mixer which has fx built-in...
Even behringer's own reverb settings r better than this one i think... There is something lacking with the m300 reverb i dont know what... It does not inspire me while i am playing guitar.
However some users may disagree with me, i think the reverbs are ok for most of the users...

When i first plugged it through my setup it was not functionning... I mean the light were on but there were no fx. bypassing the which didnt make any difference. Then i took a look to the manual and a section was mentioning about "reset procedure"
After having done this everything was fine...
If u exceed the input level the two leds go red and sometimes a very unpleasant distortion kicks in which is a digital dist. So i have to adjust well my outputs and inputs. when using it live take care of this issue.

I dont have any idea.

I am using m300 after focusrite trakmaster preamp and the sound coming from the preamp is very good indeed. I add a little chorus and reverb with m300 and sound becomes more open.
However i suspect, m300 changes the sound badly even when fx are off.
I think the dry sound directly from preamp is better than it. Just my opinion.

Protocol for writing / saving patches is a little confusing from manual but a few minutes and you can figure it out.

First thing.. There are no default written patches as other processors have. If you are using midi to control, it will not respond to changes until you write & save a corresponding patch. They say 300 and some factory settings / 99 user. The factory settings are how many combinations from the two effect engines. The 99 users are void of any written data.

It does not have a midi through.. You either have to put it at the end of the chain, get a midi patch bay or make your own midi cable solution as I did. Certainly I'd a thought they'd consider someone may be using more than just the M300 in their rack.

No power switch, not a big deal if you have it in a rack, that really isn't an issue with me. No static or other problems with it. Very well built for the price, at least externally, I'll wait til warranty is up before I lift the lid.

I use it with several amps, mostly Marshall, 69 small box, 72 Major, SLP an 800 2204, 74 twin, boogie.. etc.. Gibbys - 76 LP, 87/61 Reissue SG, Fender Strats, a Parker.. oh and a few Agiles... I run through various loop processors so I can take all this stuff out of signal path when ever not used.

I haven't noticed the noise thing yet, I'm not running at line level. I purchased to use for the reverb mostly. Delays are fine, better than many I've heard. The reverbs are awesome.

Off topic.. I use analog tape delays, I use an EP-3, EP-4 and I have a prototype Mike Battle's TubePlex which I just can't get over. That being said, I did like the analog tape simulation, it is close and a nice maintenance free alternative. I also have two Akai Headrushes E1 and E2, they do the best analog simulation I've tried yet, and you get 35 secs of looping on the E2.

Here is the biggest beef about this box I have. I sometimes like to do volume swells with a little delay and reverb. Well this device regulates the effects output with input level. In other words if you bring your guitar v pot all the way down, the delay / reverb decays just cut out. This is not cool. If you have even a little signal it won't gate so just don't back off all the way. I've never seen a processor react like this.... what were they thinking?

Also, in any real time adjusts, dropouts.

So far ok.

Their web site answers most questions no covered by manual. The no patch change midi thing tripped me up for a bit til I went on line to find out why.

Other than the effects drop out with input level changes I do like this unit. The dropouts between patches is not too cool, but I have other effects in use so it's not a big issue with me. For $199 it's hard to beat.

Ease of use is there, it is much easier to run in a live rack than the menu-driven units from Lex, etc. I can tweek a patch during rehearsal, and that is nice. Knobs you can grab are the main reasons I chose this unit.

Sound is very good. No noise level addition to my rack running it in the effects loop on my realtube preamp, then a BBE and into a Mesa 50/50 power amp. The phaser effects are really cheesy. But the reverbs are outstanding and so are the delay, chorus, and even the compressor and de-ess can be useful occasionally. Run it mostly for the reverbs, though!

Here is where TC blows IMHO. Maybe the G Major is great, but when a big name quality mfgr breaks into a new low price segment (and what a deal the M300 is) they either do dumb things trying to cut corners (ok, no power switch on the thing should have been a warning!) using an engineering team that is used to designing for quality not price, or outsource to a house that turns out a poorer quality than their "main" line. I am guessing that TC recognizes their quality comes down to their great firmware, and that great quality is running on a really lousy piece of hardware in the M300. Whatever happened with the M300, I have gone through four of them now in two years of weekend only use. And I handle my gear like it's a newborn, never run without a surge protector, all that. I finally had the M300 tucked between my preamp and BBE processor so it never saw a connection outside my rack, because if you connect this unit to any kind of flaky ground, shuffle your feet on a carpet, etc. it will hang. Power down and you -may- get some control back, but eventually all of mine have lost major functions (won't load a preset, won't receive MIDI, won't bypass, etc.) and had to be returned. One new unit I got had the "tempo" LED nonfunctional, and I bet that was the same kind of glitch, because I'm holding one now that has no response to any of the pushbutton controls on the front panel even though the DSP is happily running inside. Particularly delicate are the coaxial SPDIF outputs, if you connect this thing to a USB interface or anything (and it was such a great way to get 24 bit digital recording done, too!) and there is ANYTHING like static electricity or a slight ground difference between the PC and the M300 it will not just lock up, but lock up permanently. Random control functions will just stop responding to the front panel or MIDI inputs.
I'll be sending off tonight for unit #5 (extended warranty thank God) but I will eventually ditch the M300, I get nervous enough on stage without this kind of digital timebomb thing. Bet it would fail an EMI test. BTW, I bet not many long time users are writing these reviews, I raved about this thing too when it was 2 weeks old..

They told me if I really wanted great quality I should buy their G Major. (I also had complained that the reverbs are cut off with patch switches, but I could live with that.) I think they actually are pretty average about support.

Just because it sounds so good and costs so little, it breaks my heart to say I would not buy this one again. Digital stuff is great if it is at least as reliable as a tube amp, this one has not been reliable at all in my hands despite a lot of coddling and careful handling.

Straight Forward. Nice Reverbs and Delays for your guitar rig. I saved 300 bucks not buying the G-Major since I dont beleive i would use all the fancy icing effects on it. Just need good reverbs and delays, and this thing has it for the price. Dual engine as well.

Sound quality is good. Its wanting me to ditch my Valvestate VS265R and go for a good Mesa Boogie Lonestar or Road King now.

You can get the gilmour/U2 sound out but you have to tweek for a bit. Slap back for cool surf sound guitar is there. Just make sure you have a good amp, a good guitar with proper pickups, and pots, good guitar chord, and you should be good to go.

Dunno......only bought it 2 weeks ago.

huhh. not needed , hopefully ever.

good sound engines for the bucks. Dual Engine. Was going to buy the Lexicon 550 unit, but that was an extra 200 bucks. Had XLR's and stuff, but it didnt have dual engines, and not as routable.(serial/parallel, 2 different paths etc..). Good bang for buck.

Simple, straightforward device. The tap-tempo function makes setting delay times on the fly a breeze. The manual is extremely helpful to relative newbies like myself.

I'm using this in a rather unusual application...on the weekends, I work as a guitar tech/roadie for a popular New York-based U2 tribute band. We're not using this for the guitarist, but rather for the lead vocalist (for those Bono-style echoes on stuff like "Elevation" and "I will Follow.") This application in itself is not unusual, but the set up is...We're running it in series, with the Shure wireless mic output (unbalanced High-z out) into the Mono/left input of the M300 (Routing switch "out" for serial mode), out of the left output and into a DI for a balanced signal to the board. This goes squarely against the conventional wisdom of routing FX through a mixer's aux sends.

The reason we're doing it this way? Well, U2's music features many different delay cues...some songs, like "zoo station" require a chorus effect on the vocal. However, most soundmen either miss the cues entirely or don't care, and because you just can't trust soundmen these days, we've taken matters into our own hands. With this unit we now have consistent vocal sound no matter what venue we play - large or small, hole-in-the-wall-last-chance Irish Saloon or large national room.

Noisy? No...in fact the unit is very transparent, and a huge upgrade ove the Digitech Vocal300 unit that we used for the same application. The tape delay and ducking delay settings sound really nice. Again, there is NO COLORATION! Beautiful!!!!! And NO NOISE!!!

Yup!

Overall, a great box!

This is just an addition/correction to the previous review I made on 1/8/2004.

In regard to the LED Indicators in the display - basically the only impact they have is they reflect modifications done to a preset that the user had programmed previously. Each indicator will stay lit if the dial in correspondence to them is unchanged in the recalled user preset, and go off when an adjustment is made to the same.

These indicators also stay off period when not in user preset mode.

The M300 is a snap to use - there are no menu screens at all to navigate; instead you get a set of buttons and dials on the front panel that pretty much function and behave the same way a basic guitar effects pedal works. Every button and dial is labeled with the function it performs. Doesn't get much simpler than that on any piece of equipment.

The only display one gets is a double digital red numeric LED and its sole function is to reflect the user program selected - it does not reflect any other information at all. Above this numeric display you get a set of nine led indicators that simply reflect whether certain controls have been manipulated or remain unchanged in the current "preset" selected (more on this later). In essence, the LED's will light up when you move a corresponding dial (for instance the "tone color" dial in the reverb section) or push a button in or out (to select digital output mode for example).

One minor beef I have is TC Electronic elected to use a single tricolor LED on the input/output meters (green for a -40dB signal, yellow for a -6dB signal and red for signals approaching -1dB) instead of putting in a meter ladder. I know this was done to help keep the cost of the M300 down, however I would have preferred the same scheme in a simple three-segment ladder. It would be more visible to those of us with not-so-hot eyesight that way.

The manual is pretty straight to the point and well written, and comes in a spiral notebook style (ala the M-One XL manual). For those of us who have a lot of experience with effects processors however, the manual has a lot of redundancy; but at the same time it will be helpful to the novice that way. Since the front panel is so self-explanatory I imagine the majority of users will have to make few if any references to it.

Although one can "program" the M300 I would liken it more to using a guitar effects pedal than a rack mounted processor. You just dial it and whirl it until you find the settings you want - there are only 10 dials to worry about in all this way. You get two effects engines - one is for delay and modulation effects, and the other is for the reverb algorithms. One can use them together or separately, however, two delay/modulation effects CANNOT be run at the same time, nor can two reverbs - it has to be one of each.

In the delay/modulation section you have a dial that determines which effect you want to use, and there are 15 options in all: Six types of delays which include dynamic, tape, studio, slapback, delay (standard digital) and ping-pong. Flanger I & II; phaser/vintage phaser; Chorus; Tremolo (soft & hard), compressor and de-esser. Curiously there is no algorithm that combines a chorus and/or flanger with a delay, which is inconvenient if one likes using both on something like guitar at the same time. In conjunction with this engine, you get two parameter dials to manipulate it with. With the delay algorithms, the first dial controls the delay time, and the other controls the feedback amount. In modulation algorithms, the first controls the modulation rate and the other controls the depth (intensity) of the effect. In the case of the compressor and de-esser, the first controls the amount for de-essing and drive for compression; the second handles frequency for de-essing and ratio for compression.

The M300 also offers a tap-tempo function, which can be used manually or controlled by an external source via MIDI. Note that this is used IN CONJUCTION with determining the actual minimum and maximum delay times in the delay algorithms - in other words, the BPM rate of the tap controls the range of the time between repeats. This is a little screwball in design, but it also allows for delay time amounts as high as 4.5 seconds which makes this unit quite flexible as a digital delay box.

The reverb section also offers 15 reverb types that include: Hall, plate, vocal, percussion, room, ambience,

In short, this unit sounds quite nice and also has very quiet operation. As an owner of a TC Electronic M-One XL, I would have to say that the delay/modulation effects of the M300 pretty much are on par with the M-One XL - maybe a tad bit dirtier overall.

Flangers, phasers, and chorus gets noisy if one goes too overboard with the settings (as I stated in my 1/21/2003 review of the M-One XL on Harmony Central). But sonically speaking it all behaves very similar to the M-One XL's engine.

Delays are also very useable and very clean sounding - they sound great on my guitar. One thing that the M300 has that the M-One XL doesn't is the dynamic delay, which of course is an effect borrowed from the 2290 that essentially keeps the delay level up when soft notes are played but keeps them sound when louder notes are played. This is a great plus and is very handy live! Also the tape delay is very cool and deteriorates in sound quality like it is supposed to. The other delay algorithms are all also very useable.

The compressor is ok - I wouldn't recommend using it for smoothing peaks in an entire mix however - there is just not enough parameter control to accurately do this with. I never have used the de-esser so I can comment on it

The reverbs also sounded very nice given the price range of the M300. They are silky, transparent and surprisingly smooth. I honestly couldn't find much to fault them when applying it to my guitar sound - even the spring reverb they threw in is actually useable, which often isn't the case with a digital reverb processor.

Is the M300 as nice a sound processor as the M-One XL? I'll address this in the overall rating section.

I've only had mine for a few days. But it's built like the M-One XL, and has much more simple design and less chance crapping out - I have no worries.

This time I didn't deal with TC Electronic at all so I can't make any comment but will say so far I have not had a negative experience with them.

First off I need to say I bought this unit to augment my guitar rig - I did not intend to use it in my console and/or DAW as an outboard processor. The idea was to have a processor that does all the garden-variety digital FX without having to screw with menus and a ton of parameters when making adjustments to my guitar sound. One could call it the Keep It Simple Stupid theory. Having said that however, the M300 could easily function well in both of those capacities and I may eventually buy another one to replace one of my older outboard FX processors in my mixing console and/or using it as a second processor for outboard digital FX in my DAW.

So why did I give it just an 8 instead of a 9 or 10? Because the M-One XL is a better unit; particularly in the sense of being able to make fine adjustments and the sonic quality of the reverbs. I also gave the XL a 9 on sound quality in my review. Here's the nitty gritty comparison between the two:

First off, in regard to reverb - these two do not use the same reverb engine although it may seem that way to some people. The M300's engine uses generic type reverb with a REV2 engine, originally found in the M-2000/3000. The XL uses a new engine called "XL" (which I am guessing is a variation of the REV3 engine, also found in the M2000/3000) and has more reverb abilities than the original M-One did. It also employs source reverb, which is better suited for things like overall mixes, separated sound sources and also has more clarity and better spacial imaging over all.

In regard to delay and modulation effects - I would say this is a much tougher call, however I do think they sound a little cleaner in the M-One XL, to say nothing of the superior editing capabilities. Also the vast majority of the delays on the M300 are one-tap (mono) - in fact the only stereo delay one gets at all is the ping-ping delay. This suggests that the M300 is really intended for use with guitars, live and similar applications. If you need programmable two-tap (stereo delay) algorithms, the XL would be a better choice. The compression and de-esser are also obviously much more useful in an XL because one can be a lot more specific about threshold levels, compression ratios and the like.

The XL also has far superior routing options (six versus three). Lastly, (and probably the biggest gap between the two) the M300 does not have two complete FX engines - one specifically does reverb only and the other does delay/modulation/dynamics only. The XL on the other hand can do everything in both engines, making it much more flexible as a dual FX processor.

What does this stuff really mean? Although not as nice as the M-One XL, the M300 is still a very capable processor - I like it a lot - it sounds good at what it does and it's simple to use. The keywords here being simple and good, which is always a desirable situation. Sonically speaking, the reverb is the best in its class, period. The only other unit worth considering is maybe the Lexicon MPX-110. Here's my take on the differences between these two units:

I see only two things in the Lexicon's favor - the first is the fact you can use an algorithm that combines a chorus or flange with a digital delay and so forth. It also has four routing options instead of three. Which is cool. But the Lexicon was missing a lot of stuff that I can't overlook as someone who likes to tailor sounds and do different things - and these are probably things you want to consider when comparing between the M300 and the 110. Here are several reasons I find the M300 more preferable:

1) The 110 has no digital input which renders it unusable as a true digital outboard processor for a DAW. The M300 has this and can do up to a 48k sampling frequency in digital mode.
2) The 110 has only one parameter dial that controls everything in the effects. The M300 has five, offering much better control over sound shaping.
3) The Lexicon uses a wall wart type power supply.

The M 300 is not as straightforward as other units out there (I have a Lexicon mpx 100 and a couple of the Behringer ones and an Alesis Wedge too) but it is intelligently laid out, with a thoughtful architecture. It is more complex than the Lexicon but simpler than the Behringers or Alesis.

Storing and loading patches is a breeze. The major drawback is the lack of an output . But this is really because it it
designed to work at line levels and is expecting to send back a signal approximately the same amplitude as it is getting.
Incidentally this is why some of the people here are reporting noise. They aren't preamping the signal and so the guitar signal they send in is very low level and is getting lost in the noise. The suggested setups listed in the manual do not include anything
for guitar that is not preamped.

So bottom line - don't use this on a guitar level signal - it needs to be in a line level loop - either the guitar efffect/return or
with a mixing board.

Very, very good reverbs and the tremolos are cool - I liked about half of the other modulation effects which is pretty good for me. Very quiet when used as intended.

A great surprise was the compressor. It fattens up the signal considerably and isn't a pumper. No you don't have control
over all of the compression parameters but you can set drive and compression level and you can get pretty extreme without
too much noise. I would love for them to include their compression as a separate effect so that it could be used with the
tremolos and other mod effects.

Compression applied in the effects loop of the amp provided some interesting variety in my tone. Usually I
compress before the signal hits the amp. In the effects loop (post preamp) it gave me a lot of pick nuance and gave me a really
fat tone.

Played through my Rivera s-120 and my Boogie vtwin/20-20 amp rigs was very very nice. The Rivera's Marshall stuff was very dense and muscular and the Boogie clean stuff was really pristine and spacious.

Just got it but it seems well made.

The manual is pretty good

Mostly I'm into sound and this thing really delivers there - It would be a 10 if I could use the compressor independantly of the other mod effects.