Monomodule: the Monomachine's brain, running in your DAW

Okay, this one is wild. Shnolk took the actual DSP program from Elektron's cult Monomachine box and got it running inside your DAW, emulated on a virtual Motorola DSP56300, JIT-compiled to native code. This is not a clone, it is the original code. All 22 machines across the seven families: GND, SID, SuperWave, DigiPRO, FM+, VO, and the FX machines. The SID stuff alone is reason enough for anyone making nasty digital music to care.

Monomodule One gives you one Monomachine track with every synth and FX machine loaded up. Monomodule Six stacks all six tracks in one multitimbral instance, MIDI channels 1 to 6, six stereo outputs, the hardware's track routing intact. And Monomodule FX takes the hardware reverb, chorus, Dynamix compressor, ring modulator, phaser and flanger and turns them into an audio effect you can slap on anything in your session. The ring mod and that grimy digital reverb are exactly what industrial tracks are starving for.

There is a Library app that imports Monomachine .syx dumps losslessly, previews every preset, kit and pattern through the emulated engine, then drags patterns into the DAW as MIDI with notes, swing, slides and parameter locks preserved. The UI is DAW-first: SYN, AMP, FILT, EFX and three LFOs on one screen, values always visible, click any value and type it in. Three LFOs per track, following host transport. Every knob is a raw 0 to 127 kit byte, exactly like the hardware, and the hardware CC map is honored, so one MIDI stream can drive the plugin and a real Monomachine at the same time.

Honest caveat from the maker: it does not yet sound 100 percent like the hardware in a few areas, and the one-time setup needs Elektron's free OS 1.32B file from their website. Fine by me. It is a digital box with a very specific kind of grit, and that grit is free.

Price: free, open source under the GNU AGPLv3. AU and VST3 on macOS 12 and up (Apple Silicon and Intel), VST3 on Windows 10 and up, VST3 on Linux, Library app included.

Get it at monomodule.com.