Melda Production vs Sound Radix quality?

[frizzbee]

That's why the melda motto is "impossible is nothing"

just scroll through his threads and count how often he says "sorry not possible for technical reasons". and we're not talking about black hole sience but easy little features other vendors already had implemented...

This is why realistic analogue knobs and buttons just don't cut it with him. When he opens one of his plugins, he wants to see a limitless matrix of information and possibility.

i fully agree. but there are many other plugins that don't have analogue knobs either but still look & feel good. what do you think, how many people need the "limitless matrix of information" when making music? and on the other hand, how many want to feel comfortable when making music since it's not something technical but something you have to be in a mood for?

So for me, there is more positive than negative with this company.

to me it's the other way around. copying whole plugins, trashtalking & disrespecting other developers, hypocrtics at its best especially when it comes to marketing bla bla, stubborn (just look at the plugin manuals and how often potential customers complained about them). this whole "all other vendors only do easy shitty stuff but i create valuable plugins that are the best" (for example neutron vs. the mixing revolution which no-one has ever seen and which may come someday XD) is what's putting many people down.

I don´t think there are really new ideas in music or music production tools. Maybe a kind of new mixture of already known architectures and techniques, comfort-achievments, re-designs and workflow-layouts or those "one-button" tools which make plugging many tools in a row obsolete. Therefore I think talking about inspiration is a good choice and talking about stealing is not so good.

copying whole plugins up to the name and the marketing text on the website is far away from getting inspired... especially when melda users wrote "can you create this plugin for free?" in topics before.

[Gamma-UT]

I really hope he won't copy (again. and again) SR's POWAIR.

It would REALLY piss me off.

You'll be throwing away your plugin compressors then? If you're serious about people not copying features, your only option is to track down the hardware originals.

Also, before getting too excited about your current flavour of the month compressor, you might consider the fact that two-stage compression with the ability to have level-independent behaviour is one of the features of the Flux dynamics processors. They've only been around for a decade.

[_al_]

@Frizzbee, if he's saying things are no longer possible for technical reasons, i think that's because his plugins are now so complex, that it's becoming very difficult to make changes without having to alter some other part of the plugin, and break all backwards compatability.
i remember this happening a lot, even years ago (think i may have been using my previous kvr account), he would change something and i would be on the forum, complaining furiously that he broke something just because he felt the need to fulfill someone's request (sometimes my own lol).

It got to the point where i was begging him to just call these plugins complete, and move on, because every time an update came out, i was filled with feelings of impending doom.
Really, i think this is the only reason he can't make big changes anymore.
And remember i said at the end of my post, these plugins are not for everyone, and there are plenty people like me, who do want a limitless matrix of possibility. because, for us, we don't see a complete mess of buttons and popups. We only see what we need to see, because we've taken the time to completely learn the landscape.

Ok, as for his attitude, yeah, he can come across as an arrogant dick. No argument from me there.
But still, i'm glad he's there, doing what he's doing, because his plugins have saved me quite a bit of stress

[Neon Breath]

Melda plugins always generate polarized opinions since the beginning. Some love them some hate them.

GUI being the most common issue people have, it rarely has positive feedback. I have no idea he does not seriously address that problem to the core, as I’m sure it greatly affects the sells. (I personally restrained myself buying some of his plugins just because of the GUI)

Sound wise, most of them are great and generally sound pretty good I think. But they are not fun to use at all. It feels like a job, like a task for me to use them. Very uninspiring and creative blocker, probably related to the GUI and global workflow his plugins have.
I personally don't like having tools that are too bloated full of features that 90% of them won't never be used. I prefer the keep in simple motto.

But hey it’s an open free market and he can pulls out many plugins as he wants

[nichttuntun]

Melda plugins always generate polarized opinions since the beginning. Some love them some hate them. GUI being the most common issue people have, it rarely has positive feedback. I have no idea he does not seriously address that problem to the core, as I’m sure it greatly affects the sells. (I personally restrained myself buying some of his plugins just because of the GUI)

Hi,
that is kind of ... errrr funny
GUIs don´t make sound.

Whats wrong with a complete editable and re-sizeable GUI? There are thoughts from U-He to reform some Synths skins and some ideas for HIVE for example look like some skins Melda has. Or look at VALHALLA DSP. They get praise for their minimalistic skin design. Melda can look kinda similar to them. But huh...that´s Melda and Melda iiiis baaaad Thats kinda funny too.

Cheers

[frizzbee]

Hi,
that is kind of ... errrr funny
GUIs don´t make sound.

right, people make music. but the ui is the key to the plugin. if it doesn't fit the needs, the musician will not find a way to get the sound of it he desires...

Whats wrong with a complete editable and re-sizeable GUI? There are thoughts from U-He to reform some Synths skins and some ideas for HIVE for example look like some skins Melda has. Or look at VALHALLA DSP. They get praise for their minimalistic skin design.

easy! the difference is, they are layout well. no unnecessary popup menus, grouped for workflow improvement, things one will need only 0.00001% of the time are hidden. try to find the arp in mpowersynth for example. pita! meldas ui is generic. just like their processors.

btw do you resize the melda ui sometimes? the whole "layout" gets destroyed. suddenly everything is a much more mess than before...

[Neon Breath]

Hi,
that is kind of ... errrr funny
GUIs don´t make sound.

In case you didn’t know, the ‘I’ in GUI is for Interface. That’s the first direct interaction between you and the software. Therefore, the interface plays a vital role in any software. A poor designed layout and GUI will make the software worthless at some point.

That’s some pretty basic design 101 here man. So make yourself a favor and have a good design for dummies read.

[Winstontaneous]

Beyond the GUI issues and occasional dev attitude outbursts, I find simple things like the lack of meaningful preset names offputting. Maybe this has changed since last I checked but does he use a Markov chain or random word amalgamator for preset names, or is it just clever in-jokes? For complex plugins with a confusing layout, presets that give absolutely no clue on how/when/why to use them makes no sense.

I also find the sheer number of Melda plugins baffling...maybe MXXX goes some ways towards this but how about having a "Melda Modulator" plugin rather than "MPhaser" "MFlanger" "MYourGranny'sPuppy" "MYourGranny'sParakeet" "MMMYourGranny'sPanties" etc.?

Melda plugins always generate polarized opinions since the beginning. Some love them some hate them.

GUI being the most common issue people have, it rarely has positive feedback. I have no idea he does not seriously address that problem to the core, as I’m sure it greatly affects the sells. (I personally restrained myself buying some of his plugins just because of the GUI)

Sound wise, most of them are great and generally sound pretty good I think. But they are not fun to use at all. It feels like a job, like a task for me to use them. Very uninspiring and creative blocker, probably related to the GUI and global workflow his plugins have.
I personally don't like having tools that are too bloated full of features that 90% of them won't never be used. I prefer the keep in simple motto.

But hey it’s an open free market and he can pulls out many plugins as he wants

[Apratim]

Hi,
that is kind of ... errrr funny
GUIs don´t make sound.

In case you didn’t know, the ‘I’ in GUI is for Interface. That’s the first direct interaction between you and the software. Therefore, the interface plays a vital role in any software. A poor designed layout and GUI will make the software worthless at some point.

That’s some pretty basic design 101 here man. So make yourself a favor and have a good design for dummies read.

No, an ugly gui will not make it worthless at some point but an ugly gui will it worthless for some guys but that same gui will be gold for others

And some sacrifice are needed to be made for the flexibility and power which in this case came in form of GUI

Yes I will criticize vojtech for not having even a small window to show the filter shape and its motion or to have a easy wave table function in mpowersynth(i know its possible to have wavetable in mpowersynth but it kinda wonky ) but after I look over these two and see what I am doing with these vst it will put even synthedit,flowstone and other effect vst to shame

[jens]

Or look at VALHALLA DSP. They get praise for their minimalistic skin design. Melda can look kinda similar to them. But huh...that´s Melda and Melda iiiis baaaad Thats kinda funny too.

Cheers

WTF??? There's no way to compare these two - the Valhalla GUIs are amongst the best in the industry, the Melda ones are easily the worst.

That's like comparing Picasso's mandolin-player to some Pollock, because both are "kinda abstract"...

[jens]

btw do you resize the melda ui sometimes? the whole "layout" gets destroyed. suddenly everything is a much more mess than before...

Exactly!

[jens]

No, an ugly gui will not make it worthless at some point but an ugly gui will it worthless for some guys but that same gui will be gold for others

The Melda GUIs are not ugly, they are plain bad.

[nichttuntun]

Or look at VALHALLA DSP. They get praise for their minimalistic skin design. Melda can look kinda similar to them. But huh...that´s Melda and Melda iiiis baaaad Thats kinda funny too.

Cheers

WTF??? There's no way to compare these two - the Valhalla GUIs are amongst the best in the industry, the Melda ones are easily the worst.

That's like comparing Picasso's mandolin-player to some Pollock, because both are "kinda abstract"...

Yes. Of course and that's exactly the reason why I was talking about skin-design and NOT layout. You for sure will not compare the layout of the small Valhalla DSP plugins with the ones from Melda. It's impossible. David and Goliath.

And in fact I really like the windows approach. I got two monitors and this workflow is perfect when working simultaneously with the main elements plus for example a modulator / shape window.

Nearly all complex VSTs I know have several pages in the same windows and you have to switch endless times when fine adjusting parameters.

With Melda you can open 4 modulator windows plus still having opened the main parameters- window! And the modulators are huge and very deep.

What is wrong with that! That is perfect comfort.

Please consider again... Melda products are nothing for presets users. They are ment for people who want tho control everything and design sounds from scratch. And they go so deep that this kind of possible overview is a great advantage other VSTs don't offer.

[Gamma-UT]

That's like comparing Picasso's mandolin-player to some Pollock, because both are "kinda abstract"...

Your analogy makes no sense on two levels. Picasso was not an abstract painter and consciously avoided going down that road. Pollock was fully abstract. Rothko vs Pollock, maybe. Or Mondrian vs Rothko.

Second, if you look at the two companies' reverbs they have more or less the same controls and a selection of knobs and dials. It's hard to see how a GUI is 'bad' vs 'good' when the overall controls are much the same. Bad would surely be if the knobs didn't react well and just did their own thing - much like the knobs on my Ensoniq ZR76, which often take on a life of their own.

In terms of layout, which is presumably the main difference, ValhallaRoom mixes up the reverb and EQ controls on the basis there are a few controls that control the gross sound, Melda puts them in separate sections - but collects the important ones in each section on an 'easy' page.

The only real difference is that the default colour choices in the Melda series are not as clear as those in Valhalla and Sean makes a bigger deal of visual grouping to overcome the "sea of knobs" look. That's Nic's point about it being a skinning issue. Melda's overall layout isn't very different to the utilitarian design of things like the Lexi remote. It just doesn't have photorealistic rendering with added scratches – things that also seem to trigger orgasms and conniptions in equal measures round these parts.

Most of the popups people complain about in Melda's stuff relate to the envelope follower and other real-time controllers and the preset saving (which isn't unusual in plugins - try the crazy-size popups in Softube stuff now).

[Jake Free]

I really hope he won't copy (again. and again) SR's POWAIR.

It would REALLY piss me off.

You'll be throwing away your plugin compressors then? If you're serious about people not copying features, your only option is to track down the hardware originals.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about products that are released at xx:xx time and after very short time, a similar (as in: SIMILAR) product, which carries the exact same NOVELTY just "pops" out into the air. add to that the fact the dev did NOT deny that he's copying (quite the opposite), claiming (with a smile !) the he was "copied too" (dude, at least come up with some original excuse. but come up with it !...).

that is disrespectful and plain f*%#cked up in my book. sorry.

Also, before getting too excited about your current flavour of the month compressor, you might consider the fact that two-stage compression with the ability to have level-independent behaviour is one of the features of the Flux dynamics processors. They've only been around for a decade.

Well, as I've heard a LOT (and I mean : a L.O.T) of compressors and I've seen a LOT of videos about compressors and compression, I can honestly say that I (personally) haven't heard the results that I managed to get with that one, nor have I seen/heard results that resemble the ones seen in the video made by production-expert - ANYWHERE (I guess that with laborious automation AND compression you CAN achieve similar results but as of now - why ?).
I also know that people who used to use THREE HARDWARE COMPRESSORS (namely 1176 and LA2A) replaced them with that one (POWAIR) - for vocal/post tasks. I ask myself : if such processing power was already at hand, did those men not know about it ?
(yea, I know... one can't possibly know everything about anything out there but for this kind of processing - I believe people would have stumbled upon your flux solution, if it was REALLY bugging them).

TMALSS :
I respect all devs and understand that everyone needs to make a living... but there should be some accepted community taboos/boundaries. I just hope they would not be crossed with that one. that's all.

I'm out.