MSoundFactory -- did Melda catch up with their filter design?

[tony10000]

Hello fellow musicians

I was considering MSoundFactory mainly because I am looking for an NI Kontakt alternative: big sampler with lots of features. I like tinkering with samples.

So it's nice that MSoundFactory comes with lots of other sound generators on top. But I was told that Meldas frequency filters would not hold up against the like of TAL, Synapse Audio, Cytomics and even u-he. Especially when it comes to high resonance and audio rate modulation. And it still lacks granular synthesis and there is no sample slicer to slice up some beats.

I demo it right now, but it's a complex beast. I would like to know from experienced users of MSoundFactory: did Melda finally update thier filter algorithms to keep up with other companies? What do you think of the filter sound in MSoundFactory?

Not sure why folks are complaining about filters. Melda has that pretty well covered...

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[jan-sandahl]

There's an unexplored universe behind every corner in Meldaworld.

[Charlie Firpo]

Would like to see some more presets with mturbofilter

[jmg8]

Would like to see some more presets with mturbofilter

Coming soon...

[VariKusBrainZ]

It’s been a while since I updated.

Is TurboFilter available per voice?

[jan-sandahl]

Well, it's available in the Generator section, so the answer would be yes.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Sweet

[zerocrossing]

I was considering MSoundFactory mainly because I am looking for an NI Kontakt alternative: big sampler with lots of features. I like tinkering with samples.

This is a mistake, IMO. You will never get the same level of functions from a multi engine synth than is possible from a specific tool.

So it's nice that MSoundFactory comes with lots of other sound generators on top. But I was told that Meldas frequency filters would not hold up against the like of TAL, Synapse Audio, Cytomics and even u-he. Especially when it comes to high resonance and audio rate modulation. And it still lacks granular synthesis and there is no sample slicer to slice up some beats.

Why listen to people when there are audio demos and a downloadable demo of the plugin itself? As has been said, there’s nothing wrong with Melda’s filters. They’re just not filters that are analog emulations. Most of what you hear as “character” in an analog filters have to do with how they react to being overdriven a bit. For instance, I was recently demoing Korg’s Modwave plugin, and I thought the MS20 filter sounded pretty terrible. It turned out, it was user error, as I didn’t realize that to get the screaming resonance sound out of it I had to mess with a gain setting. So, what makes that filter so interesting is its distortion characteristics. So for a Melda filter, you have to combine a filter with a distortion module, and in that sense, it’s a far better solution because you can choose between different types of distortion and really adjust it to taste, and even modulate it.

Here’s a real world example. I bought a Waldorf M because I just fell in love with the sound of those 8 bit wavetables going though an analog filter and I liked the feature set. But I was out of space, so what had to go? I felt my Novation Peak was probably the best answer, but it really does this nice thing where you can distort the path pre and post filter per voice, and then even add a global analog distortion before the effects section. I took a few of my favorite custom patches and set out to see what plugins might get there and sound as good. After many tries, it turned out that MSoundfactory was the clear winner. It wasn’t the most CPU friendly of sounds, as I had to keep oversampling high to get the quality I was after, but in the end I not only replicated my Peak patches, but I preferred them by quite a lot.

I demo it right now, but it's a complex beast. I would like to know from experienced users of MSoundFactory: did Melda finally update thier filter algorithms to keep up with other companies? What do you think of the filter sound in MSoundFactory?

If you’re looking for a multi engine synthesizer, I definitely recommend MSoundFactory, but as has been said, be prepared to do a bit of manual reading and on-line tutorials. If you’re looking for a Kontakt replacement, I would not say MSoundFactory is it.

[Hanz Meyzer]

I really love MSoundFactory ... But the filters are really frustrating to use. If I use a UHE synth, let's say Repro, I can quite quickly find a filter sweetspot for my preset in song context, by finetuning env amount, keyfollow, res, and cutoff.

In MSoundFactory, this finetuning is really annoying. Way too indirect controls, there is only one generic filter color, too. The sweetspot is tiny. Keyfollow is cumbersome to setup. Then once there is a popup window in MSF, it blocks all keyboard shortcuts and interaction with the daw. Really, really frustrating.

I don't understand why Melda is not seeing this, and tries to improve the filter ux, plus adding more filter analog variations. MSF can sound better than the most expensive analog synth, but it's so time consuming to find these settings. It quite fast to do with Repro or Diva, or even Zebra. Because everything is already finetuned for usability here... Or at least a bit. Not so in MSF. There is no ux finetuning at all. I guess that's why there aren't too many good preset packs for MSF either. You feel like in a Windows 98 business software...

[jan-sandahl]

Getting the habit to use the preset system in MSF, can help speed up workflow. I haven't gone very much deeper than global presets. But it's there. And, the upcoming MTurbofilter might prove mighty.