Bargain Center: discussion, gossip, etc.

[Ceej]

So, The next big question is: how do I climb to the top of Melda Mountain? Assuming that Melda has another bundle sale sometime this year: How do I set myself up to get a drastic discount on either the 3rd bundle (in my case: Mixing) or one of the completes?

If you register any new individual Melda plugins, then yes, you will lower your upgrade price for any bundle that contains that plugin. Since MCompleteBundle contains everything, then any purchases you make will count.

The math is like this: Melda will credit you 70% of the amount you spend on a plugin towards the price of any bundles with that plugin. If you buy plugins directly from Melda, then they know how much you spent on it (in particular if it was on sale, they know that), so they use 70% of that number. If you buy from a third party, however, they don't know how much you spent, so they assume you got it for 50% off and then credit you 70% of that amount.

There's a bit of fuzziness here - I don't know if the "50% off" rule is "50% off MSRP" or "50% off the current Melda direct price". I have occasionally, in the past, bought a Melda plugin on sale and then waited for the sale to end before registering it with Melda, in the theory that this might increase my credit towards bundle prices. But I unfortunately can't confirm that it works that way.

I can confirm that you get some amount of credit even if you got the plugin for free - as far as I know they don't have different "free" serial numbers. Like when MTurboCompLE was free-with-purchase from Plugin Boutique last year, it did still knock $50-$60 off my upgrade prices.

All in all it's a quite fair and flexible system. The only real "gotcha", if you can call it that, is that buying bundles doesn't give you any credit towards any other bundles except MCompleteBundle and MTotalFXBundle. Basically they don't pro-rate the purchase price of a bundle based on the plugins in that bundle.

Last comment: I don't think I'd assume there will be another "60% off bundles" sale this year, since this is the first time I can remember them doing that. There will almost certainly be another "50% off everything including bundles" sale though, at Black Friday if not earlier.

[goldenanalog]

So, The next big question is: how do I climb to the top of Melda Mountain? Assuming that Melda has another bundle sale sometime this year: How do I set myself up to get a drastic discount on either the 3rd bundle (in my case: Mixing) or one of the completes?

If you register any new individual Melda plugins, then yes, you will lower your upgrade price for any bundle that contains that plugin. Since MCompleteBundle contains everything, then any purchases you make will count.

The math is like this: Melda will credit you 70% of the amount you spend on a plugin towards the price of any bundles with that plugin. If you buy plugins directly from Melda, then they know how much you spent on it (in particular if it was on sale, they know that), so they use 70% of that number. If you buy from a third party, however, they don't know how much you spent, so they assume you got it for 50% off and then credit you 70% of that amount.

There's a bit of fuzziness here - I don't know if the "50% off" rule is "50% off MSRP" or "50% off the current Melda direct price". I have occasionally, in the past, bought a Melda plugin on sale and then waited for the sale to end before registering it with Melda, in the theory that this might increase my credit towards bundle prices. But I unfortunately can't confirm that it works that way.

I can confirm that you get some amount of credit even if you got the plugin for free - as far as I know they don't have different "free" serial numbers. Like when MTurboCompLE was free-with-purchase from Plugin Boutique last year, it did still knock $50-$60 off my upgrade prices.

All in all it's a quite fair and flexible system. The only real "gotcha", if you can call it that, is that buying bundles doesn't give you any credit towards any other bundles except MCompleteBundle and MTotalFXBundle. Basically they don't pro-rate the purchase price of a bundle based on the plugins in that bundle.

Last comment: I don't think I'd assume there will be another "60% off bundles" sale this year, since this is the first time I can remember them doing that. There will almost certainly be another "50% off everything including bundles" sale though, at Black Friday if not earlier.

OK, I think that I got what you're saying, Ceej: that was smart of you, btw, to wait to register the plug in your account until after the sale was done. Good thinking. But whether it actually helped you or not can only be done by comparing cases - if it's like Waves and their continual price circus: the way it works best is to wait until (as an example) the bundle that you're after is on sale; and at the same time: what you have in your account registered to you that you want to use to upgrade is not. And then (of course) you contact Koby at everyplugin dot com (shameless plug - he da man!) for the best price.

Back ot: so 70% of Melda's current-price credit towards a purchase if you bought the single directly from Melda; or 70% of 50% if you bought it from a 3rd party - or got it for free/found the serial number lying in the street, etc. That's reasonable, imho. Yes: it would be useful to have concrete information on what the 50% is based on: if Melda's crediting is soft (they base their 70% of 50% crediting on their current pricing) then it all becomes a timing game, doesn't it? - just like purchasing Waves' products.

Yes: I'm expecting to see only 50% off Melda deals from here on out: so the next time we see the (3) "lesser" bundles half-off: They'll each be $77.50 more expensive then what we just saw: $387.50 (1/2 of $775.00) - which is how I could justify buying the additional Mastering bundle now. And acquiring singles from now on will be the rule.

It would be great to know if multiple copies of a single M-plug would all be credited towards a purchase of a bundle. Like you mentioned: the MTurboCompLE that Plugin Boutique was giving away w/a qualifying purchase: if Melda accepts lets say: (3) copies of the plugin as credit towards a purchase; and don't pro-rate because of the quantity: that's $150+ of credit!

[SolarAxix]

So, The next big question is: how do I climb to the top of Melda Mountain? Assuming that Melda has another bundle sale sometime this year: How do I set myself up to get a drastic discount on either the 3rd bundle (in my case: Mixing) or one of the completes?

...
There's a bit of fuzziness here - I don't know if the "50% off" rule is "50% off MSRP" or "50% off the current Melda direct price". I have occasionally, in the past, bought a Melda plugin on sale and then waited for the sale to end before registering it with Melda, in the theory that this might increase my credit towards bundle prices. But I unfortunately can't confirm that it works that way.
...

When I purchased MCompleteBundle during their Christmas sale a few months ago, I also had the same question and couldn't find the answer. I had about 10 plugins I hadn't registered yet that I bought from ADP, Plugin Discount, etc... and started adding them to my account. In the end, I built a small spreadsheet to figure out how the discount worked. At the time, everything was 50% off as part of their Christmas sale including plugins and bundles, and a few plugins were discounted even more.

What I found was that the 50% off is from the MSRP (full price). In other words, you will get a credit of 35% of MSRP for any plugins you purchased from 3rd party sites that you own that's part of a bundle you want to upgrade to. It doesn't make a difference if there's a sale or not when it comes to the discount you will receive.

For example, I purchased a bundle of MTurboComp ($238 USD) and MTurboReverb ($357 USD) from Audio Plugin Deals for $99 USD a few years ago and only registered them the day I upgraded. Their MSRP together is $595 USD. If you were to get the MTotalFXBundle or MCompleteBundle, owning those two plugins would reduce the price to upgrade to those bundles by ($595 * 0.35) = $208.25 USD. In this case, I was ahead by over $100 USD.

Keep in mind that once you upgrade to a bundle, any plugins in your account that are included in the bundle are removed from your account and replaced with your bundle.

Hope this helps.

[Ceej]

What I found was that the 50% off is from the MSRP (full price). In other words, you will get a credit of 35% of MSRP for any plugins you purchased from 3rd party sites that you own that's part of a bundle you want to upgrade to. It doesn't make a difference if there's a sale or not when it comes to the discount you will receive.

Fantastic! Great investigation there, very useful. Of course that's not to say Melda won't change their algorithm in future, but it seems like a good bet that this is how it works.

Keep in mind that once you upgrade to a bundle, any plugins in your account that are included in the bundle are removed from your account and replaced with your bundle.

This part doesn't seem to be true for me, though. For instance I still have a separate MTurboCompLE license in my account even though I got the MMixingFXBundle over the weekend. I admit, that seems a little weird, but with the pretty sky-high license transfer fee that Melda charges it doesn't really open up any sneaky opportunities.

[goldenanalog]

Outstanding, SolarAxix! Nice work! Ladies and gentlemen: we have clarity!

So it's simple, when upgrading: Melda credits you a fixed 35% of MSRP for whatever externally-acquired valid Melda serial that you have in your account - and with the caveat that the lesser Melda bundles do not upgrade to eachother (they're treated as lateral to eachother) - only to either the MTotalFXBundle or the MCompleteBundle.

And that any M-plugs that are used to upgrade to a bundle are apparently surrendered. That's good to know! Now is an LE version also surrendered if used to purchase the full version?

Edited for completeness.

[SolarAxix]

...
This part doesn't seem to be true for me, though. For instance I still have a separate MTurboCompLE license in my account even though I got the MMixingFXBundle over the weekend. I admit, that seems a little weird, but with the pretty sky-high license transfer fee that Melda charges it doesn't really open up any sneaky opportunities.

When I purchased the MCompleteBundle, I had a copy of MTurboCompLE that I received for free from Plugin Boutique and it did disappear when I upgraded and I did get an upgrade discount with it too (Keep in mind that this was in December 2020). Did you have more that one copy? If so, could it be that you only got credit for one? Maybe something has changed since I purchased MCompleteBundle in December 2020.

[Ceej]

When I purchased the MCompleteBundle, I had a copy of MTurboCompLE that I received for free from Plugin Boutique and it did disappear when I upgraded and I did get an upgrade discount with it too (Keep in mind that this was in December 2020). Did you have more that one copy? If so, could it be that you only got credit for one? Maybe something has changed since I purchased MCompleteBundle in December 2020.

No, I only had one copy - not sure it's even possible to register more than once, is it? I also still have licenses for MDelayMB, MTurboDelay, MDrumReplacer, and MCompare (at least) that are in bundles I bought this weekend. I can't swear that nothing disappeared from my license list when I bought the bundles, but it looks to be about the same length as it was before.

[goldenanalog]

Could it be that where the plug was sourced from makes a difference; ie - maybe Melda treats plugs differently that are bought from their site versus acquired externally?

[Ceej]

Could it be that where the plug was sourced from makes a difference; ie - maybe Melda treats plugs differently that are bought from their site versus acquired externally?

Don't think so - SolarAxix reported their MTurboCompLE disappeared, while mine didn't. We both got it free from Plugin Boutique.

The only differences I see between their case and mine is that I upgraded to MMixingFXBundle while they upgraded to MCompleteBundle; and I did the upgrade this weekend while they did the upgrade late last year.

[becseigy]

I bought MEssentialFXbundle with MSpectraldynamicsLE.
My "upgrade price" to MSpectraldynamics is 199 Euro like everyone else.

[Kurdish Mayfield]

Now: Compare what Melda does to Waves, with their WUP -
[/quote]

Why compare? Please explain how thats relevant to anything? Two different companies with 2 vastly different histories and economies of scale.Waves is likely the most pirated company in the history of music software whereas Melda is one of the least known companies out there. Why compare instead of just enjoying the offers from Melda?

[brozobob]

I've been a member of KVR for many years and have never pitched any product or service. I think this is a good time to change that. A good friend of mine recently launched a new site focusing on online guitar instruction. Mark has been providing free lessons on Youtube for almost 8 years, but is now taking it to a new level. His launch pricing expires today (I didn't know this until yesterday)...it has been running for the past week or so.

Here is the chance to same money on a 1-year or lifetime membership. Mark's approach is refreshing and stands out from other online instructors. I think you would appreaciate the way he approaches learning the guitar...

https://mark-z-guitar-school.teachable. ... ar-members

[Spring Goose]

I've been a member of KVR for many years and have never pitched any product or service. I think this is a good time to change that. A good friend of mine recently launched a new site focusing on online guitar instruction. Mark has been providing free lessons on Youtube for almost 8 years, but is now taking it to a new level. His launch pricing expires today (I didn't know this until yesterday)...it has been running for the past week or so.

Here is the chance to same money on a 1-year or lifetime membership. Mark's approach is refreshing and stands out from other online instructors. I think you would appreaciate the way he approaches learning the guitar...

https://mark-z-guitar-school.teachable. ... ar-members

fair enough mate, i'll bare that in mind if i buy a guitar.

[asprog]

Hello,

I want to thank the buyers who used my referral coupon and allowed me to buy MEssentialsFXBundle at a lower price.

[El°HYM]

Anyone who got the Plugin Boutique MTurboComp LE last year, can upgrade to the full - version for €65 in the current eternal - Madness - sales btw.