MDrummer's indecipherable documentation

[MusicProgrammer]

I rarely use my Melda purchases on account of the documentation.

The MDrummer manual states on p.9, "The Mixer is pretty self explanatory," but that just a cop-out from a developer who routinely neglects to document his products.

I load MDrummer1;
I load the drum set Acoustic - Studio 2018 : Acoustic beauty; and
I play the bass drum via MIDI channel 10;
In the mixer panel, I see activity on the OH and Room 1 meters;

I want to hear individually (1) the bass drum close sample, (2) the bass drum OH sample, and (3) the bass drum Room 1 sample. But the manual is worthless for this task, as is the tutorial video.

I try the S and M buttons below the OH and Room 1 meters, but none of the buttons has any obvious audible effect. I move the OH and Room1 faders, and they're just as worthless as the S and M buttons.

I also wasted time trying the Mute-close and Mute-overheads-and-rooms buttons.

What cheap documentation. I started this thread to ask how I can hear the solo'd samples I wanted to hear, but now I'm so pissed at Vortek or whatever his name is, I'm going to go back to not using his shit. I buy a replacement drum program, because I can't afford to waste time on this one. That's what happened to MSynth too. Never used in any of my productions; a total waste of my money.

[Hexspa]

That's interesting. I find that I'm using Melda instruments more and more. The documentation is sometimes not the best, I'll agree, but usually you can find videos to get you going - or of course the helpful folks here.

Good luck.

[MusicProgrammer]

That's interesting. I find that I'm using Melda instruments more and more. The documentation is sometimes not the best, I'll agree, but usually you can find videos to get you going - or of course the helpful folks here.

Good luck.

Thanks. I have programs from hundreds of developers, going on since 1980. Plenty have poor written documentation but Melda is at the far low end of the documentation bell-curve. I can't search a video for specific words, though I've been able to search written documentation for specific words since 1980; and waiting for helpful people on forums to answer my questions adds a 12-hour delays to my work-flow, which harms my productivity and pisses me off. Reason has good documentation, it's vast but I don't get stuck, and it has hyperlinks everywhere you might benefit from one, because they took time and care in crafting their documentation, while Melda very obviously has not. There's a half-helpful routing diagram in the tutorial video Medla didn't even bother to put in the manual. Someone took the trouble to sample a drum set with multiple microphones, but I'll never hear those samples.

[Svama]

People want features, bug fixes, a good manual and so on. I think Vojtec prefers programming and I think it’s a win for us.
I’m also not always happy with the bad manual care, but a man have to decide.
Would be great if someone after an update, someone like Chandler (love your vids),would explain the new features. Ten times better than a manual. Maybe Vojtec and Chandler can talk about this.
Reaperblog does this for Reaper after updates, the manual also doesn’t get reworked after every update.
Sobering to think about.

[Svama]

@Musicprogrammer respect to your fellows.
Use what you can handle.

[MusicProgrammer]

People want features, bug fixes, a good manual and so on. I think Vojtec prefers programming and I think it’s a win for us.
I’m also not always happy with the bad manual care, but a man have to decide.
Would be great if someone after an update, someone like Chandler (love your vids),would explain the new features. Ten times better than a manual. Maybe Vojtec and Chandler can talk about this.
Reaperblog does this for Reaper after updates, the manual also doesn’t get reworked after every update.
Sobering to think about.

I'll take an adequate manual over 100 YouTube videos. Vojtec and Cockos would outsource to skilled people for their manuals if they put their users' interests above their own preferences for programming. Or if they grew up out of the hacker-writing-code-for-himself phase, they'd finish the manuals before starting any code and then use the manuals as specs for the implementation; if they wanted to make user-oriented software instead of developer-oriented software. I really despise having to turn to YouTube for info that should be in a manual. Sometimes I think faster than they're speaking, and my time gets wasted; other times I think slower than they speak, and I have to rewind, and then I rewind to the wrong place. I don't have that problem with reading.

[MusicProgrammer]

Use what you can handle.

I handled assembly language when I was ten, processing audio in assembly in 1996, I can handle anything, but I reserve my time for software that makes efficient use of my time

[Gamma-UT]

I feel you may be more at home here: reddit.com/r/iamverysmart

I'd hate to see you waste time on a forum that's beneath you.

[Hexspa]

Well, there's definitely a demand.

[mike_the_ranger]

Don't bother. It's not written, it's compiled from generic help texts. Thats why there is so much overlap and repeating things. Not only here but in all melda "documentation".

[Held]

People want features, bug fixes, a good manual and so on. I think Vojtec prefers programming and I think it’s a win for us.
I’m also not always happy with the bad manual care, but a man have to decide.
Would be great if someone after an update, someone like Chandler (love your vids),would explain the new features. Ten times better than a manual. Maybe Vojtec and Chandler can talk about this.

I'm not sure what the financial situation of Melda is, but they could easily hire someone to write a decent manual. The current one contains so much noise, it's pretty much unusable. Same goes for the built-in documentation. A short explanation of the purpose for each module and how it compares to similar modules would be very helpful.

Instead, we get an explanation of the Show Window button EVERY time. A major improvement would already be to move the buttons shared by every module to the bottom of the docs, not the top.
In the generated PDFs, it's even worse, because the same information gets repeated over and over again. It's just too much noise.

I don't see why we can't have a great documentation and good plugins. The ROI would probably be a lot if Vojtec hired someone to improve the docs.

Melda plugins are the best I could find, but the documentation is terrible.

I'll take an adequate manual over 100 YouTube videos. Vojtec and Cockos would outsource to skilled people for their manuals if they put their users' interests above their own preferences for programming. Or if they grew up out of the hacker-writing-code-for-himself phase, they'd finish the manuals before starting any code and then use the manuals as specs for the implementation; if they wanted to make user-oriented software instead of developer-oriented software. I really despise having to turn to YouTube for info that should be in a manual. Sometimes I think faster than they're speaking, and my time gets wasted; other times I think slower than they speak, and I have to rewind, and then I rewind to the wrong place. I don't have that problem with reading.

I'm not sure why you're dragging Cockos into this. Their documentation is amazing and part of the reason why I chose Reaper over other DAWs. And the manual gets updated for pretty much every release.

[goldglob]

In the meantime:
The thing is that just soloing say Room 1 in the mixer doesn't mute the main kick pipeline, but one would expect it to. But notice that the solo/mute buttons for Send 1, Send 2, OH, Room 1, and Room 2, only affect that block.
The reason for this anomaly is probably something to do with the complexities that arise because of the choice you have of piping the Room and OH through the main output or not, but I haven't fully thought this through.
Anyway, the 'Mute close microphones' or 'Mute overheads and rooms' are meant to address this. (But there's a problem with v 14.05 at present... 'Mute close microphones' is muting everything..I've informed Vojtech.)
And there's always the little mixer in the MultiSampler tab... over on the right next to 'color'....can solo Natural, Click, Sub, Overhead 1, Overhead 2, and Room.

[MusicProgrammer]

I'm not sure why you're dragging Cockos into this. Their documentation is amazing and part of the reason why I chose Reaper over other DAWs. And the manual gets updated for pretty much every release.

I didn't drag Cockos anywhere. Cockos was dragged here by the poster who wrote above, "Reaperblog does this for Reaper after updates, the manual also doesn’t get reworked after every update." Reaper's documentation is poor, obviously written by someone who doesn't understand all the things he's trying to document. In "What’s New in REAPER v 6.0, Revision 006, 4 December 2019", p. 13, I found this explanation yesterday:

"Tucked away under Options, Preferences behind the Advanced Disk I/O settings are two new options. These are to Periodically close excess file handles and to Memory map peak files smaller than a size that you specify. If you’re not sure whether you should enable these or not, it probably means that you shouldn’t!"

That's not documentation, that's garbage text from someone who failed to document the program he's supposed to document. If a user is not sure whether he should enable those, it's because Cockos failed to document their program.

[MusicProgrammer]

But there's a problem with v 14.05 at present... 'Mute close microphones' is muting everything..I've informed Vojtech.

I ran into that bug yesterday, before starting this thread. I did try that button. But I couldn't tell whether it was a bug or not, because the documentation sucks.

[MusicProgrammer]

I feel you may be more at home here: reddit.com/r/iamverysmart

I'd hate to see you waste time on a forum that's beneath you.

I won't be here long. I am very smart, I was admitted to Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, I have won industry acclaim for music software. If that upsets your ego, I don't care.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BFFmN ... qevGUcGiA-