MeldaProduction Pros and Cons

[Artie Fichelle]

I have 3 Melda products, Mpowersynth, Msoundfactory and their drums.
I an way I think Melda are genius how they use modularity in their products. So far I think this is like the CZ SHADOW 2, just unreal good.
I only wish they would implement the oddsound EMS microtuning.
And maybe an import function for DX7 sounds.
I am not a fan boy but their approach is really long run.

[HAL76]

I´m careful with general overall judgements, but Melda offers some unique FX that are essential party of my toolbox.

Different people have different demands and expectations concerning workflows, but Melda and me seem to be pretty well aligned.

I´d really like to see more HQ content in MSoundfactory and things like more flexibility concerning preset management as well as a kind of additional documentation or wiki - and - yes - there are some others like Eventide that just sound better - but the V.F.M. is simply superiour and I´m an absolutely satisfied customer.

Would suggest them to make more demonstrations, show up use cases and just what you can do with their tools since you have to make many many experiments to get a deeper understanding.

[Andreya_Autumn]

I also wish they'd implement MTS-ESP! I wrote them last year to request it but the person who responded to me seemed beyond disinterested. :/ That's a con for me.

Also, option paralysis. I really wouldn't recommend anyone to just click "all" in their installer. There's so much stuff in there.

I still really like Melda though. Admittedly the only thing I've paid for is MBassador, but I use a few of the freebies too. Many dislike the interface appearance, but I can't say I relate to that, it looks fine to me. Workflow is good too IMO, though I do wish there were a one-click reset to default option, the commands that usually reset to default bring up a numerical input thing.

All the plugins sound good. I keep recommending them to friends.

[mixyguy2]

Different strokes. I tried their free suite and didn't care for it at all. Not saying it's bad, I just didn't mesh with the UI at all.

[Farwind]

While I appreciate their versatile and flexible plugins, they give me too many options to the point where I don't want to use them anymore. Even with "Easy Screen" they are still way too overwhelming for me.

That being said, I think some of their creative effects are pretty unique and useful. Especially, I like MharmonizerMB and MVocoder because the artifacts are less noticeable when compared to similar plugins from other companies.

[GusGranite]

Ah, a good old Marmite thread! Love? Hate? Which will it be?

Me, I love me some Melda. Top sound quality, creative, inventive, crazy modulation, much needed utilities built in to every plugin (oversampling, AGC, limiter, etc.)

And commitment to the customer. Buy once and enjoy the year on year innovations. I often see the splashy marketing for other plugins getting all the YouTube promos and forum coverage and then think to myself, “Oh, I can do that in Melda, must check that out again”.

(But don’t mention the UI lol…).

[zerocrossing]

Ah, a good old Marmite thread! Love? Hate? Which will it be?

Me, I love me some Melda. Top sound quality, creative, inventive, crazy modulation, much needed utilities built in to every plugin (oversampling, AGC, limiter, etc.)

And commitment to the customer. Buy once and enjoy the year on year innovations. I often see the splashy marketing for other plugins getting all the YouTube promos and forum coverage and then think to myself, “Oh, I can do that in Melda, must check that out again”.

(But don’t mention the UI lol…).

That’s how I feel. I own MPowerSynth, MSoundFactory, MDrummer and MXXX. All of them are brilliant. My only minor gripe is that I wish he did some analog modeled components in his instruments. Sometimes when you’re running things at audio rates, it sounds a bit stiff.

[Biome_Digital]

I use some Mlda effects too and find them useful.

[concon]

I love MXXX. It's my go-to for most effects most of the time. I especially use Mharmonizer for altering vocals. The basic GUI may not be pretty, but I find it very intuitive, highly functional, and incredibly flexible. A number of excellent instruments have been added to MSoundfactory. I would love it if an arp/sequencer were made available for modulating in MSoundfactory, like what's in Halion, and if the modulators in general could be applied to the effects, as in Phase Plant, but these are just wishes.

[] Peter:H []

Just a few thoughts

Plugins in general - I remember this announcement of the "revolutionary new eq" a few weeks ago ...
I was curious and took a look into meldas "every Multiband-FX has it" crossover section and found... "Oh, well, we Meldarians have had this so called revolutionary thing for years already". Crossovers for mid/sid, level, panorama, tonal/transient ... you name it. At the same time this example shows one weakness of melda - the plugins are really very powerful, feature-rich, complex and stuffed with stuff The arbitrary user who thinks she/he has only to buy the next shiny new, colourful, visual appealling plugin to become a pop star, will not invest the time to deal with the complexity of melda plugins in depth ...

MSF - Though it is a very powerful tool, it claims to be the best modular system. But I'm afraid it isn't. It lacks for instance a whole signal class, i.e. control signals. And the routing is kind of "unique". That's the other thing about melda. If you buy into melda, then it's meldas ways of things. Don't expect it to meet your expectation fully about how things should work, guis should look like or workflows are supposed to go. When talking about modular MSF has rich competition like Bitwig Grid which is more a modular thing in a traditional sense. That sounds a bit negative, but it's a neutral look at MSF compared to "exaggeratedly positive"... I did whole tracks with only MSF as a synth and it works quite well.

Unique stuff - I name MSpectralDynamics as one example. Very unique fx.

Overall: I think Melda Tools are really powerful and I enjoy being able to use them. It's an option to consider.

[.jon]

Whie I'm not inspired by their instruments (I only use a handful of plugin instruments anyway), a bunch of Melda fx and utilities are absolutely essential for me. I find their sound quality top class, and the shared, tool-like UI very functional.

I only wish their installer wouldnt litter my hard drive with all that junk from plugins I dont even have.

[n9research]

I'm an MCompleteBundle owner and, in my usage, while in some classes of fx (distortion, delay) the Melda offerings have been easily picked off by purchases from other brands, some are still going strong (e.g. MAutoDynamicEQ is all the EQ I'll likely ever need, MTurboReverb is still endlessly fascinating) and others (Stereo management, Dynamics) are still in regular use alongside other brands

I'm a big fan of MSF, and it has numerous unique and powerful features, but I use it less and less over time. The sampler is critically weak (no granular, stretch, cumbersome interface), and as I find I'm using sampling-based instruments more over time rather than pure synthesis, I'm reaching for my custom Bitwig Grid setups, or Harmor, or Pigments, which make sample-based synthesis a joy to explore. Just this week I converted my entire library of sfz, decentsampler, kontakt patches to Bitwig multisamples, and now have over 20,000 patches ready to drag and drop into the Grid sampler, right from the DAW browser, which has been really fun to use and an immense inspiration!

[Artie Fichelle]

How did you convert so many samples to Bitwig? Batch converting or by hand?

[kvotchin]

Terrible interface, underwhelming “big” plugins (for the most part), many overpriced (some not though, probably, at random half price anyway..), unreasonable resale fee.

A few decent plugins however. But even then, there’s the price (usually), interface, and resale fee. So, I’d look for alternatives, pretty much always.

[n9research]

How did you convert so many samples to Bitwig? Batch converting or by hand? 

I was hoping someone'd ask that!

The answer is: I found https://github.com/git-moss/ConvertWithMoss and thought I'd give it a go

Wasn't completely without pain (some rare instances of bad/unrecognised syntax in the source files caused termination) but for a free tool quite a miracle how well it dealt with such a huge workload

Props to Moss for building it