Monumatic

With Monumatic, Knobula somehow crammed a full 8-voice polyphonic synth into the space of just 12HP. Luckily, this doesn’t mean a deep-dive into infinite submenus or just endless preset-scrolling; what you get is a module with a few well thought out parameters that still manages to offer a very wide range of sounds.

So where do all these flavours come from? For starters there are 16 different oscillator modes. You’ve got everything from those classic, trance-y Roland supersaws, solina strings, some lovely Casio phase distortion; then there are sounds that mimic the timbre of the Polymoog or more punchy organ tones. Think of these as starting points. From there, you can sculpt the sound using six filter types — everything from classic lo-pass options, more phasey weirdness, and a really smooth 24dB Butterworth filter. There’s also an overdrive to give things a bit more grit when needed.

Another neat thing is how you control it. You get dedicated CV for the essentials like V/Oct, Gate, and the filter cutoff, plus two extra CV inputs you can assign to pretty much anything (swapping oscillator modes on the fly, for instance). It also handles MIDI and even MPE really well if you’re using an external controller. Switching between playing chords polyphonically or using it as a punchy monosynth is handled by a single button, easy. They’ve also included a clever micro-tuning feature for the poly mode. You can make it sound a bit drifty like old vintage gear or have it apply ‘just intonation’ tuning on the fly, which will alter how it sounds harmonically. You can even control that tuning drift with CV. And if you just want instant chords from a single gate, you can program your own into its internal slots.

It’s a really dense module that gives you a lot of synthesis options, whether you need chords, pads, or a solid lead/bass voice. What’s nice is that you get all of this without it eating up loads of valuable rack-space and it should integrate nicely whether you’re controlling it via CV or MIDI. In other words, there’s a lot to love in there — Monumatic offers an impressive range of sonic flavours.

Features:

• 8-voice polyphonic / monophonic synthesizer module (12hp)
• 16 selectable oscillator modes (virtual analog algorithms)
• 6 switchable filter types: LP24, AP (Phaser), Vowel, Low, Notch, High
• Filter Drive switch
• ADSR Envelope with Glide control
• Dedicated V/Oct and Filter CV inputs
• Two assignable CV inputs (CV A, CV B) for modulating almost any parameter
• MIDI Input (TRS-A) with MPE support
• CV/Gate input
• Chord Memory function (8 slots, user-programmable via MIDI)
• Adjustable Temperament/Micro-tuning (Shift + Detune)
• Built-in Stereo Reverb and Chorus effects
• Shift functions for secondary parameters (Volume, Glide, Voice Pan, MIDI Channel, Temperament, Fine Tune, Reverb Time, Chorus on/off)
• Stereo Outputs