TC Electronic M-One XL

I use this for live sound. Very straight forward unit. Easy to use. I never had to read the manual once. If you want to edit something, there's and 'algo edit' button for each engine, press it, scroll through the parameters, and you're off. Routing is also very easy, the interface is very user friendly with clear displays.

Seriously for the price, there isn't anything that comes close to the sound quality and features of this unit. Someone below compared this to a lexicon mpx1, something I recently did as well. For almost twice the price, the mpx1 does sound good. Better than the m-one-xl? I wouldn't say so. Some people have a preference to TC verbs to lexicon or vice versa. Well besides the TC unit being far more user friendly, I also liked the sound of the TC better. Both units have great verbs, although the TC has less tweaking parameters, I thought the reverbs were more usable right off the bat. Especially for drum verbs. The verbs on this unit are very clear,and crisp. The delays work great as well and the dual engine factor is yet one more reason I would take this over the lexicon mpx1 which is almost twice as much. If you do have more to spend I would try the TC M2000 which is the next step up from this unit. Costs the same as the lexicon mpx1 and I imagine it sounds better given how comparable the m-one xl is.

I've yet to have a problem with it, TC is a solid company. Very dependable item and well built.

Never had to, though I've heard great things about tc customer support and the one time I emailed them a question about the C 300 compressor I received a very prompt and helpful response.

This thing is great. For the price its an exceptional value and the fact that it has dual independent fx processing so you can run two separate fx returning on two different channels makes it even more of a good buy. Overall, it sounds great. Very easy to use and a valuable asset to my work in live sound. As far as comparing TC to lexicon, I think for the mid range priced fx units TC is the way to go for sure, you definitely will get more for your money. I think lexicon really shines for with their very high end studio verbs, which even then the high end tc stuff will be right there with it. I think anyone spending under a grand on fx would be considerably better off with a TC unit over lexicon.

Yes, the fact that you have to turn the knob is a little slow - especially when you use presets that are really far apart. I could just save the ones I use into the user patches...

Otherwise, the thing is easy. Intuitive, obvious. There's no way that anyone with a minimal amount of technical skill could think this thing is hard to use.

Used as a guitar reverb.

PRS (and homemade custom instruments) -> Mesa Formula Pre -> 2120 -> TC M-OneXL -> Mesa Poweramp -> H&K 4x12.

The M-One is NEVER noisy. Whatever would make a peice of gear with XLR inputs noisy is beyond me.

I usually program the hell out of my tools - but I have never once needed to do a thing to program my TC M-one. There are presets for nearly anything I could think of myself, and they sound great without modification.

There are some chorus effects that are wonderful, and the reverbs are good too. The delays are okay - but I would suggest getting a D-Two Rhythm Tap delay if you want full-out delays.

I have never thought I would need a backup of this peice. I bought it new and don't throw it down stairs or spill coffee onto it. Sure, I use it to gig.

TC is pretty damn cool. I had to call them once and they were helpful.

Never needed a repair - wouldn't do an upgrade (especially since "upgrade" isn't necessarily an upgrade!!)

I play in every style imaginable - but I do exclusivelly original stuff so I never needed to copy someone elses signature sound.

I've been playing for 16 years - and would love to deck out my entire studio with TC gear.

As far as I know, there is nothing else in its price range that compares. Stay away from cheapo stuff like Digitech. A digi processor may sound good - but they will break on you until you give up and buy a tc.

:)

The unit is very easy to work with. It may not be as easily laid out as the lexicon pcm 60, but it does have an interface and all the i/o's that you will ever need. It comes with a manuel, but you probably won't need it.

Okay, my first reaction to the sound that I got from the unit was a "Oh my God!" I can't believe how good this product is for the price! The reverb has a smooth tail and isn't metallic. I've used the "guitar hero" and played "Magdalena" from A Perfect Circle's Mer de Noms album. It sounded as good or at least close enough. If you are thinking about buying a Lexicon PCM reverb, you may want to try the MOne XL. It's a lot closer to that level of quality then you might expect from a much more expensive unit. Of course the MOne isn't the best of the best, but for the money its not bad at all.

I haven't had any problems. I had it for more then a year.

Great technical support staff at tc electronic. You can leave a message for a call back and they will call you back.

The best reverb for under $500.

I have read reviews where people have found this processor difficult to use but I personally thought it was fairly simple. The only gripe I have is that in order to change values you must turn the Control wheel. Do you know how many times you need to turn the knob to adjust from lets say 500ms to 20ms? It should have had Up/Down buttons as with other gear I own. My concern is how long will the wheel hold up? For this I give it a 5 rating.

Awesome reverb and delay!

With exception of the Control Wheel scenario mentioned previously, I really like this processor. The sound quality is excellent!

The interface is ok once you use it for a while. I prefer the editing on a Yamaha Spx to this. This has 200 presets and 100 user slots so there are plenty to chooose from. The manual is ok and does the job.

The sound quaility is very very good on the reverbs. I would descibe them as clean and like cream. If you are looking for the vintage (distortion) sound for your digital recording this is not it. The unit is very quite also.

So far so good.

I did have some questions and there support through there web site was great and very helpful. A lot companies could benefit by checking TC's website out for service.

Right now I'm using this for live sound. I like the idea that I can split it into two seperate units in one rack space. I use it on drums and vocals mostly. I use the tap feature to change delay times for different songs. For the price it is a pretty nice unit. I would prefer a little differnt arangement for editing and LED displays as opposed to the meters contained in the LCD. This is great unit for live and probably even better for recording. Seems like it would work great for guitar players because of the tap feature.

This unit is fairly easy to work with. Since it is my first rack gear piece, it took a little getting used to. But with a quick glance at the manual, I was on my way to quality effects heaven!

Even though this processor is meant for vocalists, it is AWESOME for guitarists. There are great effects and you get to choose what kind of each one you want. For example, if you want to use a chorus, you get to choose either classic chorus,4-voice or slow. It's awesome. This ting is NOISELESS by the way. My only beefe with it is that if you have just alittle too much volume, it totally uts it down and kinda kills things a tad. Other than that, it kicks ass.

Fuckin great. I can always count on this.

Nothin has happened but I'm sure they are good!

Overall, it kicks ass. Whether youre a drummer,guitarist,vocalist or studio enginneer, this thing is for you.

The M-One XL itself is pretty easy to use - the parameter knobs are cool, and the display is well organized, and it's fairly easy to get this thing setup and working right. I got it going without the assistance of the manual except for deciding which routing option I needed to use for my system. Overall it is a very pleasant unit to work with.

The M-One XL?s display in particular is well designed and illuminated, shows a lot of details, and is very easy to see. It is a three-color reverse LCD (red, green and yellow letters and icons on a black background) to help better distinguish between the heavily packed icons and letter matrixes. It also is far superior to that of the MPX-500/550 and the Roland SRV-3030/D, both of which have the standard black LCD on a green backlight (even with the meter ladder). The meter ladder on the M-One XL can be seen easily from a considerable distance and I must give TC Electronic kudos for that as my eyes aren?t so great.

The manual is fairly well written although (as stated in other M-One/XL reviews) it gets annoyingly repetitious on its tips and descriptions, especially in the reverb sections. Otherwise the manual is well illustrated and very concise; the user should be able to make sense of what they are reading fairly quickly. The print is small and might need to be read in an area with adequate lighting. Lastly, I like the spiral notebook style of the manual ? it?s nice to just plop it down and have it stay on the same page without having to pin it down.

Actual programming of effects is pretty simple to do in the M-One XL, and one will be dealing with the basics instead of complicated acoustical theory and weird acronyms found in the more sophisticated processors. In fact, the largest amount of parameters one will have to deal with in this unit is 12, and they are all quickly accessible thanks to the scroll up/down buttons and data entry knob. For example - in the ?Plate 2? algorithm, the following parameters exist for editing: decay time, early reflection size/predelay, high and low color, high cut, reflection/reverb levels, modulation on/off, modulation speed/depth and overall FX level. This is pretty straightforward while still offering a fairly decent amount of ?tweakability.?

I also like the fact that each effects engine has its own labeled button on the front panel to access parameters for editing, which means no stupid scrolling back and forth between the two ? this is a nice touch.

Patch changing has an effect cutoff time of around 300ms, which is much faster as compared to the MPX-500 which takes a full three seconds to change between patches ? this makes the M-One XL more suitable for on the fly live applications than the Lexicon.

MIDIwise, I haven?t tried using it although it?s nice to know that the tap function can be slaved to an external MIDI clock. The tap function can be manually adjusted with the data wheel either in milliseconds or beats per minute, and can control things like delay time and modulation speed. One can also just tap the tempo on the tap button to adjust the tempo speed.

But there are a few things left to be desired in this unit. First and foremost: No TS/TRS inputs. This is not an issue here as I use only the S/PDIF connectors in my M-One XL, but this type of input jack should be present at this price point. Someone buying an effects processor for 400 bucks very well may be using only unbalanced audio equipment in their studio and would need such I/O. This wouldn?t be an issue had TC Electronic not stopped making the original M-One (which had TS/TRS jacks). The presence of XLR and TRS analog connectors on the back of this unit would have made the M-One XL a truly decent (and universal) budget processor, useable in any situation. Maybe in the next generation they?ll do that.

The aforementioned knobs are nice, but the data knob is annoying in the sense that there?s no wraparound from one end of the parameter field to the other. For

I bought the M-One XL based on the sonic performance of original M-One since all of the original?s features remain in the XL, plus a few extras. The XL offers enhanced reverb algorithms and two additional effects algorithms not found in the original (ping pong delay and small room reverb).

There are also two other major differences; one being the XL doubles the amount of factory presets (100 new presets plus the 100 original presets found in the M-One). 100 user slots are still available for user programs, giving the user up to 300 programs available at any one time. The other difference is the addition of a fourth early reflection size (called ?XL?) in the reverb algorithms.

TC Electronic claims that the M-One XL?s focal point is reverb, and I tend to agree as the reverbs sound nothing short of fantastic given what it costs. Hall, room, small room, ambience, spring, live, and two plate reverb algorithms are offered. The reverb tails are exceptionally smooth, and the early reflections are very well defined. I liked it a lot when I auditioned it through analog I/O at the store, but when I patched the unit up via S/PDIF to the DAW in my own studio, it sounded even better. The reverb on this thing is simply transparent and silky ? and very unobtrusive (not grainy at all). Even when a lot of reverb is applied to the dry signal, it retains its definition and doesn?t get obscured in a pool of mud - which is the sign of a quality reverb.

The delay algorithms also sound very nice. You get a pretty basic set of delay algorithms which include one and two tap, plus a ping pong delay. Given the amount of delay time offered (up to 4 seconds) it would have been nice to see a multi-tap delay algorithm (like the 8-tap delay found in the old Alesis Quadraverb Plus). There is certainly enough delay time available to accommodate this kind of effect.

The M-One XL also offers several other modulation type effects, which include a chorus, flanger (classic and 4-voice for each) and a phaser. All of these are very usable but tend to get a little noisy if you are not careful (heavier depth and feedback settings in the flanger in particular can get kind of noisy, especially via analog I/O). There also are pitch detune and pitch shift algorithms available; the pitch shift in general is not that great and after a few semitones aliasing starts to get pretty bad (which is typical at this pricepoint). The detune function does what it?s supposed to do although I personally prefer a real chorus most of the time since in essence a detuner is just more or less a simple chorus effect.

And finally the unit offers an assortment of dynamic processing tools, which include a parametric EQ, compressor/limiter, gate/expander, de-esser and tremolo. These aren?t bad, but I haven?t really used any of them that much simply because I don?t really need them ? I bought the M-One XL for outboard reverb in my DAW, which is what I use it for 90% of the time.

I've had mine for around four months now and I've never had any problems with it. Seems to be a very stable unit.

When shopping for effects processors, I had a fairly pleasant experience dealing with TC Electronic via email - they answered my questions promptly and also sent me product literature/audio demos in a very reasonable period of time. Have not talked to them on the phone.

As for comparisons, the M-One XL's reverb beats out everything cheaper that's currently out on the market, and is better than the MPX-500, which is very similarly priced (and I?m guessing that the new MPX-550 is Lexicon?s answer to the upgraded M-One XL). It also compares very well with an MPX-1, and is more useful in the digital domain because the MPX-1 will only work at a 44.1k sample rate (the XL does both 44.1 and 48). It falls short of the PCM81 and PCM91 (which is to be expected in regard to the price points of those units), but not blatantly so. It also is better than the Roland SRV-330 and SRV-3030's reverb, but the Roland processors are far superior in editing (many more reverb parameters are available on the Roland units). The XL also beats out Yamaha's REV500 in sound quality but falls a little short in edibility (for the same reason when compared to the Roland units above). The other effects (delay, chorus, flange, etc.) in the M-One XL also compare favorably to the other units in its price range.

As for the M-One XL's own siblings, it appears to be a simplified M2000. Here is the comparison between the two:

In the M2000?s favor: Many more parameters to edit effects, and includes AES-EBU digital I/O, which is a better choice than coaxial S/PDIF especially in regard to things like RFI shielding.

In the M-One XL?s favor: Better AD/DA converters (24-bit/128X oversampling versus 20-bit/64X oversampling), and the coaxial S/PDIF I/O?s resolution is superior to the M-2000?s (24-bit as opposed to 20-bit). It?s also a helluva lot easier to program.

In short, the M-One XL sounds just as good as the M2000, maybe even better (probably why TC Electronic isn?t making M2000?s anymore). But the real issue in choosing between these two units (IMHO) is complexity versus simplicity.

The XL is also sonically better than the original M-One because of the enhanced reverb algorithms, plus two additional effects algorithms that the original didn?t offer. It?s also better than the M300 (which appears to be a simplified M-One with less algorithms and far less programmability). It obviously falls short when compared to an M3000 ? but considering the M3000 is on the same price level as the PCM91, this is as it should be.

On my wish list: It would really be nice if TC Electronic were to take the simplicity of the M-One XL and the sound quality of the M3000 and come out with a nice middle of the road processor in the original price range of the M2000. One can only hope anyway. But for now the M-One XL would be a nice addition to the setup of anyone with the need for a decent budget outboard processor in either a studio or live performance environment.

The bottom line - the M-One XL is a great sounding effects processor at a very meager price. The reverbs are very useful, as are the other effects within its DSP engines. I was happily surprised of the M-One XL?s ability to generate clean smooth reverb tails and nice echo/modulation effects ? not to mention the unit?s overall good flexibility and functionality. The fact there are two high quality stereo reverbs alone makes the M-One XL worth its street price. It?s also a nice improvement on the original M-One at the same price point. And if one already has something like an M3000 or PCM81/91 and needs a good secondary processor, the M-One XL is definitely worthy of consideration.

M-1 = $300 for 1/4" balanced i/o, 100 presets
M-1 XL = $400, plus small-room and ping pong, 200 presets

I bought the M-one because my Focus ISA 110 has 1/4" send and return. I don't mind paying the extra $100 for the additional features. Disappointed that the XL has only xlr i/o.

Add little noise even though I thought the send/return was the most quite path (vs. chain pre -> efx -> amp)

GUI is cumbersome, too many steps to recall memory.

N/A

Wish there are more presets on Flanger, Filter... Maybe, wah efx too...

I took this thing out of the box, punched up a routing and reverb mode and away I went..... I haven't tried editing any of the patches yet, but the interface is a bit awkward, and the manual leads you nowhere on the patches. A nice appendix manual with all of the default settings to each patch would be helpful.. Maybe even a brief explanition of how settings affect sounds so recording isn't just a game of who knows what ... that you don't know.... therefore they're able to get a better handle on the controls.

Currently I am using this in my home studio. I run vocals from a GT66 tube mic through a Focusrite Penta (Preamp/compressor) directly to the M-One XL to a Roland 890 or 2480...depending on what I'm up to. I only want to use the M-One XL for reverb/De-essing on vocals, so I haven't tried putting it on the effects bus yet. I'm still playing with it. I found it clean and quiet....with the best processsed reverb in its class. Beats the Lex500 hands down.

I/ve had it 2 weeks...hasen't broken yet!

N/A -- haven't had to call them...yet

So far...for my use...I give it a 9!. I do not intend to play this thing out...only home studio work...demos/song ideas/scratchpad etc.... I am a guitar player..and play various styles..classic rock, new rock, folk, instrumentals. My vocals are pretty strong all alone, however I wasn't getting a good representation with my outboard Furman Springs, or the Roland DAW's. Live, I use a Mackie 808s and two Marshalls (Acoustic and electric amps) out two JBL Pro 215's. At home I monitor through a Mackie 12 channel mixer (VL series) out to Project Studio Bi-Amped monitors (PS5) and a Project Studio 400W downfireing sub. I also use high end AKG phones. I master with Wavelab 4.0.

I used this unit for reverb on a recording, so I haven't explored any patches such as delay, flange, etc. But setting up reverb is reasonably easy for the amount of control it gives you.

I compared this box to a Lexicon MPX-1, which costs about twice as much (the comparably priced Lexicon MPX-500 just blows). In making this comparison I used a dry recording of a choir that I made and was familiar with. The problem with inexpensive reverb procs is that at the end of the tail, the CPU isn't powerful enough to generate enough reflections - this gives a metallic "ringing" sound. The MPX-500 had this bad. The MPX-1 exhibited very little of this effect. But the M-One XL? ABSOLUTELY NONE. The reverbs are incredibly lush and smooth, and sound just fantastic. Plus, the ability to run two effects at once (the first one I've used that does this) and have a KNOB to balance between the two is great too. Hands down, this is the best sounding reverb I've heard at anywhere near this price. I cannot comment on its other effects, however.

I have twice used it on a gig without a backup. But I haven't had one very long at all.

New owner. No comment ;-)

It's not a 480L. It does sound like a machined reverb. But for under 400 bucks (avg. street price)?? This thing has the lushest reverbs I've heard at this price (or the price of an MPX-1 !!), has decent ergonomics, (I think knobs are going out of style - I'm glad they included four!) and for its class... It just rocks. =)