27? Anyone else notice this?

[AGIGA]

The plugins are not "feature reduced" in the free version.

Yes they are. Features which are active in every other Melda plugin are disabled until you pay for them.

Notice that one of those features is saving and loading your own presets, which is about as fundamental a feature as it gets. For every other developer under the sun, that feature reduction puts you in 'demo' territory.

I understand what you are saying, but why should Melda give away a fully featured singleband version
of their multiband plugins for free. This just makes no sense from a business standpoint. Would you do that if it was your company? The 25€ for the upgraded bundle on sale is already a steal for what the bundle is offering.
But also many of the featured plugins from the free bundle are very usefull even without the ability to safe presets (for example the utility plugins).

[whyterabbyt]

I understand what you are saying, but why should Melda give away a fully featured singleband version
of their multiband plugins for free.

Who said they should? I didnt.

What Im saying is that you're not getting fully featured singleband versions for free.

I'm also saying I feel that the price for the fully featured singleband versions, which are still called 'free' even though they're not, is possibly now high enough to put people off 'conversion' from the actual free (but restricted) version.

edit : And to be clear, I am not making a complaint or demand about this. I am trying to make the (constructive) point that this may have an effect on perceived value versus cost of the paid 'Free Bundle.

edit 2 : Also to be clear, I upgraded my copy a decade ago, so this isnt about cost to me.

This just makes no sense from a business standpoint.

No, it doesnt. Using confusing terminology like 'free bundle' for 'feature restricted demo' and 'for pay version' doesnt make any sense.

Would you do that if it was your company?

Rename the FreeBundle to DemoBundle and CheapBundle

OR

Remove some of the non-utility stuff from the free Free Bundle, keeping just a couple of 'example' effects in there, rename the for-pay Free Bundle to BasicBundle, include single-band versions of the few missing bits where the single-band version is only in the CreativeBundle, and increase the price to 75€.

OR

something else.

The 25€ for the upgraded bundle on sale is already a steal for what the bundle is offering.

Its not 25€ its nearly double that at 45€.

But also many of the featured plugins from the free bundle are very usefull even without the ability to safe presets (for example the utility plugins).

Many demo plugins from many other vendors are similarly useful. Doesnt change my point.

[WasteLand]

The 25€ for the upgraded bundle on sale is already a steal for what the bundle is offering.

Its not 25€ its nearly double that at 45€.


Many demo plugins from many other vendors are similarly useful. Doesnt change my point.

on sale it is €25. cheap. in a way you can say it are demo plugins, but the state of the plugin will still be saved by the DAW?? i bought the MFreeFXBundle, in sale. regurarly it is €49. in dollars i don't know.

but besides saving presets, that you can use the modulators, the melda advantage, is worth the price, for 37 plugins.

but people use them as free, and have no problems with it.

[steve2KVR]

mmmmmm...used'em for more than a year and finally noticed there as an "expanded" version, and that's after buying MADEQ and a few others...slow learner I guess...and there are lots of other's offering "basic" and "expanded" versions, so I just don't get all fuss...(sigh).../s~

[sirmonkey]

The plugins are not "feature reduced" in the free version.

Yes they are. Features which are active in every other Melda plugin are disabled until you pay for them.

Notice that one of those features is saving and loading your own presets, which is about as fundamental a feature as it gets. For every other developer under the sun, that feature reduction puts you in 'demo' territory.

So, the FREE bundle is not 100% as valuable as something that has some price tag. This is explained
here: www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeFXBundle
If this bothers you, then work for free, 100% of the time, all of the time. And if your owner is
somehow dissatisfied with your work, then offer him a refund. Problem solved!

[whyterabbyt]

So, the FREE bundle is not 100% as valuable as something that has some price tag. This is explained
here: www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeFXBundle
If this bothers you

It doesnt, as you'd know if you read my comments properly.

[sirmonkey]

So, the FREE bundle is not 100% as valuable as something that has some price tag. This is explained
here: www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeFXBundle
If this bothers you

It doesnt, as you'd know if you read my comments properly.

Fair enough. I did re-read your comments, and found that I was partly mixing up some of what you said with some other comment. It's all to easy to forget who was making exactly which points (for me, anyway). Also, I missed the post by darkstar. Maybe I should go back to the beginning...
Oh no, I'm lost in the comment section again!

[sirmonkey]

Just my honest opinion, which I say with no snark:
I think the Free Bundle provides a huge amount of functionality, whether or not the plugins could
be described as "feature reduced". For someone unfamiliar, that term could really give the wrong
impression. To at least some, that term means "crippled". Know what I mean?

[sirmonkey]

Duplicate post. Aaaarg!

[AGIGA]

As far as I see it, everything is explained on the Melda homepage. Everyone can decide for themselves if they want to use this plugins or not.

From the Melda Homepage:

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeFXBundle

MFreeFXBundle contains a set of audio effects, which are completely free. Our commercial plugins offer many more features, but these are still extraordinary when compared to most plugins on the market. You can extend the features of these free plugins at any time by purchasing a licence.


and

The software is totally free of charge, so please download and enjoy! You should consider upgrading to a professional version though, as this is what you would get:

Advantages of the upgrading

You can change size and style of the plugins.
You can access the sonogram feature in the analyzers and equalizers.
You can manipulate (save, load, organise) your own presets.
You can access the modulators.
Most plugins can perform upsampling which minimizes aliasing, therefore it is useful to improve sound quality.
The plugins will not display the big red reminder box with our clickable logo at the bottom of every GUI.
You will make us happy and help us develop more free software .

[Starship Krupa]

Oh dear, I did not intend to open this silly can of worms, the "Free Bundle isn't really 'Free' because you can pay to upgrade it" argument.

How about this simple thought exercise: for anyone who feels that the Free Bundle is incorrectly or misleadingly labeled because it is possible to pay a fee to extend their feature set, how would you feel about it if it were not possible to pay to extend their feature set?

What if Meldaproduction offered the same set of plug-ins for download, with the same red banner (with only a company logo, but not asking to buy an upgrade) but had no option to remove the banner or make it so you can use the internal preset manager or access sonograms or resize the UI's or upsample or use multiparameters? Would you then have the same problem with calling it the Free Bundle?

If the answer is no, then it seems that you are basically objecting to the fact that there exists another set of plug-ins similar to them but that have more features, that you can pay money for. Or you are objecting to a feature that the Free Bundle has, which is that their feature set can be extended for a fee. Which if that were not possible, you know that people would be clamoring for Meldaproduction to allow them to pay for the Free Bundle to have the extra features anyway.in

So why is it an issue that a free plug-in has another version that isn't free? Is Tokyo Dawn being misleading because they have their Gentleman's Editions of their freeware plug-lns?

I agree that the ad copy could stand to frame it better, as I have done. "If you like the free versions, you can buy the professional versions for a reasonable fee" would emphasize that they are different versions, not "unlocked" or "upgraded" forms of the same plug-ins. And yes. perhaps calling the professional versions the Basic Bundle would be a cool thing, because since I paid to upgrade my Free Bundle, and they're such great processors, I kind of dislike referring to them by the same name. So, "for 49 euros, upgrade the Free Bundle to the Basic Bundle." How about that?

(BTW, I'm not sure why there's such a big deal about saving presets when every DAW has its own preset management system that will allow you to bypass this non-issue)

[WasteLand]

Oh dear, I did not intend to open this silly can of worms, the "Free Bundle isn't really 'Free' because you can pay to upgrade it" argument.

How about this simple thought exercise: for anyone who feels that the Free Bundle is incorrectly or misleadingly labeled because it is possible to pay a fee to extend their feature set, how would you feel about it if it were not possible to pay to extend their feature set?

What if Meldaproduction offered the same set of plug-ins for download, with the same red banner (with only a company logo, but not asking to buy an upgrade) but had no option to remove the banner or make it so you can use the internal preset manager or access sonograms or resize the UI's or upsample or use multiparameters? Would you then have the same problem with calling it the Free Bundle?

If the answer is no, then it seems that you are basically objecting to the fact that there exists another set of plug-ins similar to them but that have more features, that you can pay money for. Or you are objecting to a feature that the Free Bundle has, which is that their feature set can be extended for a fee. Which if that were not possible, you know that people would be clamoring for Meldaproduction to allow them to pay for the Free Bundle to have the extra features anyway.in

So why is it an issue that a free plug-in has another version that isn't free? Is Tokyo Dawn being misleading because they have their Gentleman's Editions of their freeware plug-lns?

I agree that the ad copy could stand to frame it better, as I have done. "If you like the free versions, you can buy the professional versions for a reasonable fee" would emphasize that they are different versions, not "unlocked" or "upgraded" forms of the same plug-ins. And yes. perhaps calling the professional versions the Basic Bundle would be a cool thing, because since I paid to upgrade my Free Bundle, and they're such great processors, I kind of dislike referring to them by the same name. So, "for 49 euros, upgrade the Free Bundle to the Basic Bundle." How about that?

(BTW, I'm not sure why there's such a big deal about saving presets when every DAW has its own preset management system that will allow you to bypass this non-issue)

i think a lot (a lot?) use them as free. they function properly.
and indeed, did i already mentioned that, here. state of plugin is saved with DAW.

you miss oversampling, modulation, resizing, saving presets and for some plugins the sonogram.
ow melda calls it upsampling.

many can live with it. i paid it for it in sale. because i have about 50 more melda plugins, i thought buy it... i always overlooked the possibilites of this bundle.

in way it is a teaser, but people mention that use them as free. presets, many don't make. modulation, people get crazy (haha, i like the way melda works..). so, i think it can be consider free.

i can say it is a question of semantics, but i am very precise in that way, although in english i can't be that precise..
but the name is the teaser... and if you want to have the options, in sale €25, in dollars i don't know, 37 plugins. pretty pretty (barbarella).

[Starship Krupa]

I used them for years without upgrading them. I've never programmed a modulator or multiparameter on any of my Meldaproduction products and the DAW I use, Cakewalk, can impose 2X oversampling on plug-ins by itself.

The ones I mostly used were MCompressor, the one I used to really teach myself how a compressor worked, and MEQualizer, same. I asked a mix engineer friend of mine to come over because I was frustrated, I had been listening to Elliott Smith's XO as a reference and couldn't get my lead vocal to sit "out in front" in that wonderful way.

So my friend, unfamiliar with my collection of software, asked me to pull up a compressor with a good, easy-to-read meter, and at random I pulled up MCompressor, and he said, "that's perfect, fantastic!" because of that great display it has. Then he also asked for a parametric EQ and I grabbed MEqualizer to go along with it, and he walked me through finding and notching "honks" in my vocal track, then had me set the compressor to 4:1 and get it to where the needle was "dancing" back and forth at the 4db reduction point.

Then he said to try cranking up my vocal fader to see how I liked it now. I still grin thinking about it. And sometime after, the lightbulb lit up and I said "oh s--t, it's paradoxical! You take things away from the individual track so that you can crank it up louder in the mix!"

All that wonderful discovery happened with un-upgraded Free Bundle plug-ins. And all these years later, I still use those two, I still think they beat serious ass. The more I learned, the more I learned to respect how good they were. The only ones I never outgrew.

[Kalamata Kid]

I have the "paid free version" and several Pro plugins.

My only complain is that the "paid free version" plugins do not appear in the MxxxCore.
So when I am working with MxxxCore I forget the about the "paid free version" plugins.
I may do away with using MxxxCore altogether but not sure if this is the answer.

[AGIGA]

I have the "paid free version" and several Pro plugins.

My only complain is that the "paid free version" plugins do not appear in the MxxxCore.
So when I am working with MxxxCore I forget the about the "paid free version" plugins.
I may do away with using MxxxCore altogether but not sure if this is the answer.

If it would be possible to load the single band versions in MXXXCore, it would make the multiband versions obsolete.