I bought the M-Tron when it first came out. I was impressed with the demo's I'd heard on the GMedia website & it came across as sounding genuinely unique. For the price I just had to have it.
Installation was well handled by a menu system that aloud you to choose which patches you wanted to install. A complete install was around 500MB but I decided it best to hear everything on offer. All the patches had a definite vintage quality about them & they were brimming over with warmth & character the likes of which I'd never heard from a soft synth previously. One of the first patches I tried was the flute sound that, on the original mellotron, provided the intro to the Beatles classic Strawberry fields. Sound wise it was spot on but I noticed a problem with my M-tron at this point which was that some of the notes appeared to be missing! I e-mailed the Gmedia tech support who very quickly replied & directed me to an update patch which solved the problem (So, Hats of to GMedia for customer support which was excellent).
The controls on the M-Tron are very simple but allow you enough control over the sound to make things interesting but without loosing the character of each sound. The M-Tron also adds Attack & Release time which apparently the original Mellotron never had. This allows you further control over the characteristics of each sound & is especially useful on the more string like patches in order to make them softer.
The documentation is simple but it gives you a brief history of the Mellotron & explains that it wasn't really a synth at all but in a way the worlds first sampler.
The M-Tron really is a classic Soft synth with a warm sound that's full of character & is unique amongst soft synths. The extra volumes of 'Tape banks' that have been released add even more wonderful sounds to an already excellent collection (Just make sure you have plenty of hard disk space!). Some might argue that the M-Tron is nothing more than a collection of samples from an old synth but what you actually have here are a collection unique (And very rare) sounds from an equally unique instrument. Of course, It's not going to be for everyone but one listen to the demo MP3's on the GMedia website will convince you of it's worth one way or the other. In my opinion for £45 you can't go far wrong.Read Review
