MeldaProduction Pros and Cons

[Starship Krupa]

My favorite plug-in house, but not without caveats.

The standard UI is time-tested and found to be Not For Everyone. He is trying to address that with optional more skeuomorphic ones, most notably on the "Turbo" FX. I happen to like the standard UI, I managed to make it more aesthetically appealing by tweaking the colors. The standard colors are....unexciting, and I believe that our creative tools should inspire us to use them. Fortunately Melda's noted flexibility allows for customization.

The utilities (and MCompressor and MEQualizer) in the FreeFXBundle are some of my favorites in their categories anywhere. MAnalyzer, MStereoscope, and the noise and signal generators are workhorses. MCompressor has the best display of any compressor I've used in terms of seeing exactly what it's doing. And there are unique tools like MDrumleveler. MAutoAlign sees plenty of use around here, as does MRhythmizer. MTurboReverble is, IMO, one of those "you'll never need to buy another plug-in of this type" FX, and it has benefited greatly from the new pretty UI's. Same with MTurboDelay.

If there's an Achilles heel (aside from the love it or hate it standard UI), it's the documentation. It's where the genius of Vojtech's reusable code method falls short. Page after countless page describing the standard UI's features and then one or two pages listing "what the buttons do" for the particular effect itself. Light to nonexistent on application suggestions, which is hard to excuse when you're peddling such "unique" FX.

I guess you either "get" their thing or not, and it's good that there's the extensive FreeFXBundle to help you decide which is true for you.

[kritikon]

I only ever bought MVocoder and absolutely love it. Cheapest of the lot and the most clear-sounding one, plus lots of mod options which though I haven't used yet are still a nice to have bonus. One of these days I'll probably check some of their other stuff out - they do multiband allsortsofthings which can be useful. Not a fan of their mega d/l to get anything but I can put up with it. As for documentation - all I can say is that their vids for MVocoder are superb. Succinct, useful with some esoteric tips that are genius - for example I would never have known I could use a vocoder to get a creative reverb FX.

I used quite a few of their freebies years ago and at the time they were extremely useful and functional. GUIs are nothing to write home about but they're very usable and not too cluttered.

[Held]

If there's an Achilles heel (aside from the love it or hate it standard UI), it's the documentation. It's where the genius of Vojtech's reusable code method falls short. Page after countless page describing the standard UI's features and then one or two pages listing "what the buttons do" for the particular effect itself. Light to nonexistent on application suggestions, which is hard to excuse when you're peddling such "unique" FX.

I think where the documentation shines is when you're inside the plugin and wonder what a button/knob does. Simply hover over it and press F1, and you get an explanation. Almost no other plugin I have does this.

Other plugins usually have better manuals, though, which you can easily read through to familiarize yourself with a new plugin. Ideally, you'd get both.

Melda has some great video tutorials, but not nearly enough to make up for the poor manuals.

[Vortifex]

Cons: interfaces designed by Satan himself

[MirkoVanHauten]

Pro: cheap, some modulation is nice, if you like rocket science these plugins are for you, easy copy protection

Con: UI & UX (pop ups, scroll behavior, grouping and placing of controls, look what resizing does to the the layout and controls, use of unconventional icons just to be unconventional not to improve), marketing & trashtalk bs (like they invented everything, all others are bad), copycat & same plugins all the time (count the # of eq, compressors, reverbs, ...), documentation & support (never a bug, either it's your fault or it's a featurea and all DAWs are bad anyways), many plugins produce artefacts (everything spectral involved) & others just do not work properly, license transfer fees & nobody wants to buy them 2nd hand anyways, you buy twice: once the melda plugin and then the replacement , installer (installs everything everywhere) & uninstaller (leaves files behind and at some point just deleted every dll file starting with a M)

[Teksonik]

Pro:

Even if you only install one Melda plugin you get all these other files for FREE....(which are totally useless to you).

279 files:

Melda 1.png

292 files:

Melda 2.png

Why does Melda install all the files for every one of his plugins even if you only install one plugin? Because it's "easier for him". What a nice guy.......

[fgimian]

Pros
- Great copy protection
- Excellent sound quality & DSP
- Very flexible plugins
- Responsive support
- Support for context menu in VST3 versions (especially great for us Cubase folks)

Cons
- Very messy installation (as shown by Teksonik above), in fact, Melda are the messiest of any manufacturer I've ever dealt with; this is definitely my biggest gripe by far and a big reason why I'm not sure that I will buy any more Melda plugins
- One massive installer for all plugins .... not a fan of this!
- The GUIs are too pop-up heavy, you can't even browse presets without a pop-up (Voxengo has a better approach where you can use a little triangle to just browse using a dropdown menu, or click Presets to open a popup)

[kobal]

Mpowersynth, Msoundfactory sound really good , could be nice to recreate some analog filter design , i m sure it would be easy for them if they get intrested into this.

[kobal]

Sometimes when you’re running things at audio rates, it sounds a bit stiff.

did you try with increasing oversampling? i didn t but i guess it could fix that, these can run at insane rate

[zerocrossing]

Sometimes when you’re running things at audio rates, it sounds a bit stiff.

did you try with increasing oversampling? i didn t but i guess it could fix that, these can run at insane rate

Yeah, it’s not artifacts, it’s just not really sounding like an analog filter. That’s fine, but sometimes it’s what I want.

[SamDi]

Pros:
-In terms of features they are rarely limiting you
-Deep as hell
-If you have an crazy idea and no tool is able to do it, theres a big chance, Melda solves it
-Overall good sound quality
-Synergies in UX - when you know the principles in one tool, you know 90% of them all
-Wide value ranges (see cons)

Cons:
-Not inspiring
-UX feels cluttered
-Sometimes difficult to find sweet spots <--> not so many happy accident's; you need to know what you wanna do
-Manuals are for the thrash can. They describe too much the same generative implemented stuff, which is the same for all plugins, but don't go deep into the specifics of the plugin. Also these specifics are well hidden between the standard stuff
-Dedicated specififc tools are often better and nicer to use(e.G. FF MB-Pro vs. MDynamicsMB)
-Sometims minor GUI bugs (like mouse pointer gets slow)
-Doubleclick to switch Preset

[bilrobins]

I have the Complete Bundle and it is pretty amazing.

My advice would be to spend a little time setting up the interface to suit you. Spend some time getting used to one plugin + the modulation and tools. Once you've done this (and it won't take you that long), the rest of the plugins become pretty easy to use - and incredibly powerful.

Overall: very CPU efficient, very powerful, great audio quality, occasionally options are not obvious (but this gets better with experience). Certainly amongst the most powerful plugins available.


CHEERS

[Apratim]

Oh wow --- a melda thread ----- wonder what the people are still saying about its popup intensive GUI

while some people may trash melda for its GUI --- what i can say for it is --- if you know the flow for one plugin you know all the plugins. (which is one of its greatest pro and also its con)

else the only other CON i could say is the installer --- should provide indivisual installer for users who dont own all the plugins

oh and the PROS : CPU Efficinet , free upgrade , modulation heaven ...... LIST GOES ON AND ON AND ON

[FAS122]

Pros:

A lot of great presets.
The UI is very flexible when resizing.
Features, Features, Features, Customize everything.
I like the preset browsers.
You can get the LE versions for much less if you don't need those features.
Free updates.
MultiParameters are supercharged macros.
Lots and lots of sales.
Great modulators.

Cons:

The installations can be weird sometimes.
Difficult to really get going on a patch with all the features.
Larger presets can REALLY tax the CPU.
The manuals are unhelpful sometimes.
The UIs can sometimes get a little annoying, but it's not too much of a problem.

These are just me though.

[psynical]

Hasn't this already been discussed to death in these forums?
Some people love the plugins, others hate them. End of story.