Monotimbral (from the root prefix mono meaning one, and timbre meaning a specific tone of a sound independent of its pitch) is usually used in reference to electronic synthesizers which can produce a single timbre at a given pitch when pressing one key (if the synth is monophonic) or multiple keys (if the synth is polyphonic).
An electronic musical instrument may be multitimbral,[1] which means it can produce two or more timbres (also called sounds or patches) at the same time.
In a fully digital system, each sound module is virtual, since in reality algorithms combine samples together in real time for output to a single D-A (digital to analogue) circuit.
Inexpensive multitimbral synthesizers combined with a MIDI equipped computer made home studio recording much more accessible to the digital musician, particularly keyboard players.
By capturing information digitally via MIDI, one could play back an entire work with several voices on a single multitimbral synthesizer.