Review: MONIQUE Software Synthesizer by Monoplugs

Monoplugs has just released a new original synthesizer called Monique, available for Mac and PC (Windows, Linux). It’s ready as VST, VST3, AU, or Standalone versions. This is a morphing 3-OSC synthesizer driving a synthesis based on 2 different presets, giving a powerful audio chain mostly with high-quality oscillators and a feature called Morph Mixer.

It’s able to do real-time (displaying all moves on the GUI) modifications on values of sections of parameters between 2 presets called Left/right (or A/B if you prefer)!

Overview

The GUI is beautiful and the whole plugin window is zoomable, as you zoom any standard window on your desktop, from a tiny to a giant size if you want, to fit perfectly where you want Monique to be on your screen.

This is very good if a lot of plugin developers will allow this possibility of zooming in the plugin’s windows. At first sight, you may think that this software synth is quite complex, but not really! All direct features and functions on parameters values are displayed on its main window.

We have 3 main oscillators with different short waves rendered from sinus, square, saw, noise. These 3 oscillators get a lot of modifiers and morphing between values after in the audio chain: Filter Input from osc1/2/3, Filter Env, Mod Mix, LFO, more various Filter parameters, Morph Mixer working on parameters ranged in 4 different categories: Osc, Flt, Arp, FX. Monique has a good list of internal presets, more than 100 at all, mostly good for electronic music and more.

Globally, Monique, has 2 presets in memory, and you can decide to go from the LEFT or RIGHT preset (not for Pan left/right but as whole presets like A and B, with all parameters in memory). The final result is what Monique does on these 2 presets, how it can morph various parameters between them, helped by a lot of LFO, mixer values, and a fantastic GUI for all this tweaking in a single zoomable window.

One of the big features we have in Monique is the Morph (MO) Mixer, which is located just below the Filter Inputs part:

To get the Morph mixer parameters at the bottom of the plugin, just click EDIT and the piano keyboard zone will now be replaced by the Morph parameters. The Morph Mixer allows doing real-time transitions between presets, on different ways combining filters, envelopes, and more, all this even by LFO as the source for modulations!

This opens to an infinite variety of sounds, even starting with only 2 presets, one for the left part, one for the right part, Monique is able to manage the new resulting preset and do it all in real-time, in the way of Sunrizer synth morphing from A to B position.

New presets will be loaded and remembering on the GUI which old presets were chosen for the Morph section. Doubleclick the mouse on knobs that can recall default (example 0 or 100) or just before edited values, it’s great to use when editing on your own presets. Some values on different knobs on the GUI are going from 0 to 100, some from -100 to 100, or we have even different accurate values such as the Hz value for the Cutoff knob.

When Monique is displaying its own piano keyboard at the bottom, replacing the Morph Mixer Edit parameters (Set EDIT off), you can quickly go left or right on the piano keyboard to get a lower or higher octave by using the wheel of the mouse. It’s easy to test the sounds you’re working on with it.

Sometimes a few presets are programmed to start playing and won’t stop after playing, so in this case, the play start-stop of the DAW hosting Monique will stop all sound and let you continue on editing. More nice features are inside Monique with the CTRL mode, the SHIFT mode, a MIDI learn mode for external controllers and OSCI.

CTRL switches the display on and off for all values in numbers given by the interface. OSCI mode available at the top-right edge will display an oscilloscope at the bottom replacing the piano keyboard, with a real-time display for oscillators, outputs, fx, and fx mod. Very nice to look at!

The SHIFT mode switch between all back knobs/values and all front knobs/values on the GUI! For example, we have Cutoff and Mod% on this same Cutoff knob – one for Hz value and one for modulation power on this Cutoff frequency, between -100% and 100%. Most parts have this back and front editing on the Monique plugin.

The setup allows different tweaks on the GUI, such as colors and tooltips on/off. I like the Matrix GUI, and the original colors by default too, which give a pretty and serious plugin!

Tip! One great thing with tooltips On is that if you leave your mouse pointer a few seconds on anything, it will show a popup displaying a quick help for this under-the-mouse feature.

Conclusion

Monique by Monoplugs is a really fine 3-OSC synthesizer, full of features and modulations in a well-designed GUI. You may think it’s mostly a sound designer synth at first sight, but the GUI is not so complex to understand after a few minutes: for this, check the pretty Monoplug website and the Monoplugs YouTube channel giving pro tutorials to the musicians and sound designers.

I hope that Monique will be soon available on iOS too. I really like the zooming GUI and the way the synthesizer is built to access all 3-OSC features and morphing possibilities on selectable values based on 2 different presets in memory.

Monique software synthesizer is available via Monoplugis website for Mac and PC (Windows, Linux) as VST, VST3, AU, or Standalone versions. If you want to discover even more, please follow the link below (a demo version is also available, go ahead and try it).