Greetings Elektronauts,
I’m debating whether or not to buy a Monomachine. Can anyone tell me if the built in reverb is any good? Is it decent enough to run other gear through it? I haven’t been able to find any demos online.
Thanks in advance.
It’s passable a a standard plate / room type reverb but it isn’t the same sort of reverb as say on the A4 or OT.
Remember though that you have the following in the FX section -
THRU
Reverb
Chorus
Dynamix
Ringmod
Phaser
Flanger
All of which will have their own dedicated AMP ADSR with distortion, Filter with Attack & Decay, independent delay, sample rate reduction and 3 lfo’s.
So you have a pretty creative tool kit for processing external audio in very creative ways.
The reverb sound is rather dependent on its own internal settings, how you use the filters and or any delay that you mix in truth be told.
So you’d probably be using it for more than just the reverb if you’re running other gear through it. I tend to go for a through machine into delay = filter then use the neighbour track for adding a bit of sparkle with the reverb for example.
My Korg Triton runs through my secondary Monomachine and I prefer using the MnM filter, delays etc on that signal path in general - the filter sounds especially nice with no stepping like the Tritons but there are lots of creative ways to use a Monomachine for signal processing that don’t seem obvious at first (as shown here by Hector)…
I don’t have any of the analogs but my opinion is that the Mono’s reverb is better than those of the OT and the MD. Much more usable. Any time I start out with an OT reverb, I always take it off later. MD reverb is good for a bit of a room sound but I usually end up turning it down too.
in addition to what venndiagram and veets have said: it’s good for what it is, but it’s not going to replace a dedicated, high-quality standalone unit of course. i find it’s useful for adding presence to mnm synth machine patches, especially when stacked with a chorus machine and a couple of track delays.
i have gotten good results processing external sounds with the mnm’s efx in general, and the ideas in the hector video can just as easily be applied to your own grooves as to a turntable. i’m not sure what your specific hopes & goals are 
but offhand, i’d say if you’re willing to use at least a couple of the mnm’s tracks as an efx chain you will have something more than useful in your setup, not least because each machine in your chain will be tightly integrated with the others and individually sequenceable.
Thanks for the info you guys. I’m stuck between buying an A4 or a Monomachine. It will likely come down to whichever one costs less I suppose.
The reverb is the best FX in the MnM (besides the delay, which I don’t count as FX here, since it doesn’t use up a track). Still, I hardly ever used it when I had a MnM. The A4 reverb absolutely destroys the MnM reverb. The OT’s dark reverb is much better than the MnM too.