Why isn't Melda more popular?

[HSum]

Of course there are the reason mentioned in here. I also think it starts with basic things not being logical like expecting people to be geniuses to work with those plugins but thinking they are too dumb to not know what 32/64 bit means and that's why 32bit installation is mandatory. It's complaining about the bad other companies which build the neverending same plugins but on the other hand offering a dozen eqs, reverbs and comps as well as "being heavily inspired" by popular other plugins. It's being "the best plugins" but not being able to report the latency of a synth correct. I think there are devs being consequent because of decent reasoning and there are the ones talking one thing and doing the other.

[alexang]

I recommend Melda ALL THE TIME to people and always get the same responses: UI is not great, frustrating, confusing, confusion over the device/edit screen paradigm with the multiparameters which doesn't make sense until you fully understand MXXX - but then some plugins have it and others don't, non standardizing of features in free vs pro, when should I use compressor or dynamics or turbocomp or dynamicsMB, so sometimes MB is the pro version with all the features but other times isn't.... At which point I give up trying.

[Kumal]

Just a story I laughed about recently: someone trying to use plugins from the free bundle. But on his 4k monitor it were tiny windows, making them basically unusable without nose-to-display contact After the suggestion he has to buy the free bundle to do some essential thing like resizing, his next question was recommendations for proper working free plugins. He also pulled this one up shortly after when the topic about things like creating bugs on purpose or delaying fixes to trick customers into buying came up (it was about plugin subscriptions, update plans, cloud stuff).

[GusGranite]

It's funny how this becomes a love/hate thing. I am a huge fan of other developers. Toneboosters and Klanghelm (value!), TDR (pure class!), FabFilter (design!), Acustica (that sound!).
Aaaand Melda Productions (deep deep deep!).

We are so lucky.

[Mrs_Midi]

It's funny how this becomes a love/hate thing. I am a huge fan of other developers. Toneboosters and Klanghelm (value!), TDR (pure class!), FabFilter (design!), Acustica (that sound!).
Aaaand Melda Productions (deep deep deep!).

We are so lucky.

Nicely put.

[machinesworking]

This is a simple question to answer. They are not more popular because the developer over the years posts a lot of anti Apple threads here on KVR and I imagine other places. Music is still the one area where it's 50/50 for the most part between Mac OS and Windows. You can't expect every Mac OS user to agree with your constant anger at Apple, and personally I cannot expect or trust that a developer who literally spent weeks when Catalina came out ranting in a thread about how all of us that use Mac OS should buy a nice PC will be able to automagically turn off that bias when he's coding for Mac OS.

Subsequently I have never bought a Melda plug in, and probably never will. I suppose if I used Windows I would, but I don't particularly get his approach in terms of end users? We simply do not care how hard your job is. I'm sorry that sounds "harsh" but I mostly make my money working construction, I've got the broken bones; the torn and cut tendons that go with that. My sympathy for your extra work on my platform of choice is near nil.

So there's your reason, alienating half your income source is never a smart move. Compare this to U-He, who started off OS X only, and for the most part comes across as non partisan. Compare the size of the companies. Granted, I would probably make the same mistakes if I had to rely in any small part on my online presence as part of my "marketing"

Plus, constant flash sales. Personally I'm a sucker for a sale, but it definitely messes with the customers perceived value of your product. No way around that.

[nonstatic]

A few things:

1) GUI - built for tinkerers, a novice will get lost quickly. Turbo series improves on this a little, but the 'average user' will still be turned off by lack of 'appealing' visual design

2) Plugin names - even the diehard fans get confused sometimes

3) Sort of related to the first point, but we all know these plugins are incredibly deep, to the point that 'easy mode' is still disorienting to the 'average user'.

With this in mind, I believe that Melda appeals to the sort of person who loves to tinker, and that Vojtech is probably fine with that. There's an active user community making contributions (alternative themes, MXXX/Msoundfactory devices), but again, this appeals to a certain type of person. You can make an easy parallel to Reaper in the DAW world (or MuLab/Bidule). Ridiculously powerful, features over form, encouraged user community interaction, but smaller comparative market share. When your team is small, you can run your business perfectly fine this way and have hardly any concern about how popular your products are compared to whoever is dominant in the market.

[Tricky-Loops]

There's another thing that could be improved - the presets. They have strange names and deliver even more strange sounds but you rarely find any really good sounding presets.

Maybe someone should concentrate on making really great preset sets for MeldaProduction plugins!

There are synths with really great preset sets like Synthmaster, why not for MeldaProduction plugins

[Tilly]

For me it's indeed a quality vs. quantity thing. 100 plugins avaiblable, but which to chose, which will actually work good enough and which will sound musical? Sure the looks (but rather flow, alignment, hidden/visible options, window flood, than actual ui - I mean i'm glad they're at least away from the fake faux wood and pseudo 3D knobs), the handling, the sound, the unfortunately needed documentation will also be a problem. And due to the constant sales knowing all these products are only half as valueable as their prices tag says and even then there's enough of a profit margin. Regarding this these plugins have reached the same negative impression to me like in general wave products or plugin alliance. Though I at least own some waves stuff which I can just slap on and done, no rocket science. Some other thing is the dev/community talk. Like MSF will be the ultimate Kontakt killer or the mixing revolution will be way better than Neutron and such (without there even being something in development) and knowing exactly this has never been the case when they announced something like that and actually work worse (autoalign, morph, ultramaximizer just to name a few). So marketing also takes its fair share in the equation. The good thing is the market is big and there's lots of competition. No single monopol with unique plugins that aren't interchangeable.

[magmagwa]

This is a simple question to answer. They are not more popular because the developer over the years posts a lot of anti Apple threads here on KVR and I imagine other places. Music is still the one area where it's 50/50 for the most part between Mac OS and Windows. You can't expect every Mac OS user to agree with your constant anger at Apple, and personally I cannot expect or trust that a developer who literally spent weeks when Catalina came out ranting in a thread about how all of us that use Mac OS should buy a nice PC will be able to automagically turn off that bias when he's coding for Mac OS.

Subsequently I have never bought a Melda plug in, and probably never will. I suppose if I used Windows I would, but I don't particularly get his approach in terms of end users? We simply do not care how hard your job is. I'm sorry that sounds "harsh" but I mostly make my money working construction, I've got the broken bones; the torn and cut tendons that go with that. My sympathy for your extra work on my platform of choice is near nil.

....

Plus, constant flash sales. Personally I'm a sucker for a sale, but it definitely messes with the customers perceived value of your product. No way around that.

Agreed. The OSX bashing is not a good idea for a growing company. Given M1/M2 and the ability to run apps natively Macs, will again become a creative's powerhouse machine. Obviously Catalina was a plan for Apple to get to the M1, you gotta break a few eggs. I feel that the whinging about Catalina / Apple was not understanding of their ultimate goal. A goal that benefits us. Apple has to be part of the plan or else Melda can't be part of my plans. I like them both and want it to work out.

[Q9000]

Plus, constant flash sales. Personally I'm a sucker for a sale, but it definitely messes with the customers perceived value of your product. No way around that.

This assumes that value (for someone or a company or anything) is equal to price. This relationship isn't true today (linux is free, yet it's super valuable) (Vital Synth is free, yet it's extremely capable) etc., was never true and will never be true.

Some commercial BS can only be justified by commercial BS or better markidding or both.

Would anyone be happy with a appropriate price of Melda plugins (take 10x)? I don't think so.
Would the developer be happy with even less cost for the plugins? I don't think so.

[machinesworking]

Plus, constant flash sales. Personally I'm a sucker for a sale, but it definitely messes with the customers perceived value of your product. No way around that.

This assumes that value (for someone or a company or anything) is equal to price. This relationship isn't true today (linux is free, yet it's super valuable) (Vital Synth is free, yet it's extremely capable) etc., was never true and will never be true.

Some commercial BS can only be justified by commercial BS or better markidding or both.

Would anyone be happy with a appropriate price of Melda plugins (take 10x)? I don't think so.
Would the developer be happy with even less cost for the plugins? I don't think so.

I think there's always been and always will be a perceived value difference between free open source software and companies that have constant flash sales. Nobody thinks open source code is of no value, plenty of people will never buy a Waves plug in for instance unless it's on sale, and regardless of the actual usefulness of the software, the plug ins simply do not carry the weight and branding they did when they cost thousands of dollars for the bundles.

It's the fickleness of capitalism. Perceived value matters, and it has nothing to do with the actual price or quality of the product.

[steve2KVR]

...not sure you'all are from, but in this part of world "flash sales/discounts/events/etc" is the way marketing has been conducted for decadesm(ever?). Melda is playing the game just like everybody else, so what's the problem here? Every vender does what they do, that's the way it is...at least around here.../s~

[machinesworking]

...not sure you'all are from, but in this part of world "flash sales/discounts/events/etc" is the way marketing has been conducted for decadesm(ever?). Melda is playing the game just like everybody else, so what's the problem here? Every vender does what they do, that's the way it is...at least around here.../s~

Melda had about a two year never ending sale.. what else is there to say about that? up until maybe ten years ago there were these "super cheap" shops on Market street in San Francisco, with going out of business sales, that lasted 20 years.

[steve2KVR]

...I guess, sort'a my point. "super cheap" means whatever you think/want, so maybe "those other guys" are just over priced. It is what it is, no more, no less. So I enjoy what I got "and let the other ones slide".../s~