Pseudopop

So... should I choose to climb down this particular rabbit hole, where should I start? Pro-Q 3? Straight for the Essentials bundle?

YouTube comment by Boz:

Tempted by ST 4, but I think I'll wait for Total Studio 3 MAX upgrade.

Good thing I haven't gotten around to getting that Indiependent SDX yet. Another rare case of my procrastination paying off. 🙂

I can picture the people at the plugin shops: - "Larry just made a post saying that we have plugin x on sale, but our shop shows the retail price! Why?" - "Uh... because it's not supposed be on sale?" - "Put it on sale!" - "Just because some random dude on the 'net said so?" - "Random du-- that's The King! Put the mother%&$# plugin on sale!"

From the fine print of the "Buy SD3, get one SDX for free" deal:

Uh, no. If you buy it for $34 from Melda then it counts as $34 x 0.7 = $23.80 towards a bundle. They count only what you have actually spent, not what the plugin costs outside a sale.

Everything is -50% right now, the same percentage as during the weekly madness sales. There are people selling Melda plugins at KVR, but what I've seen they are not much cheaper than what you can get them from Melda directly (and sometimes people are asking more than half of the retail price). Probably because of the transfer fees.

But only if you know for sure you are going to buy most of the plugins eventually. I'm not so sure at this point. They give you 70% of what you have spent. I suppose that can be considered super generous. 🤷‍♂️ 8 of the 10 plugins in Essential can be found in Mixing, so I think Mixing might be a better choice, for me at least.

If you're new to Melda plugins here are a few things you should probably know about their pricing (correct me if I'm wrong): If you upgrade from a) individual plugins to a bundle or b) from one bundle to bigger one (say, from Mixing to Complete), they reimburse you 70% of what you have actually paid for a) the invidivual plugins in the bundle or b) the smaller bundle. You will not be reimbursed in any way if you crossgrade to a bundle on a same "level", like from Mixing to Mastering. If you have bought a plugin or a bundle from a 3rd party, they assume you have paid 50% of the retail price and reimburse 70% of that, ie. 35% of the retail price. If you want to sell your Melda plugins, they charge you a whopping 20% of the retail price as a transfer fee. Want to sell your MMixingFXBundle that currently goes for €599? Please pay ~€120 in transfer fees. So if you buy MMixingFXBundle during the Black Friday sale for €300 and later want to upgrade to MComplete, you get a discount of €300 * 0.7 = €210. On the other hand, if you had bought the same bundle from someone else for less than €210, you would still get that €210 discount and would actually be making some profit. I've been making a list and I've noticed that buying individual plugins quickly adds up to the point where they equal or exceed the cost of a bundle. I'm probably interested in only 7 plugins in the MCreativeFXBundle (currently €599), but individually they cost €613. Same thing with the MMixingFXBundle (currently also €599) where the six plugins I'm interested in cost €614. I'm not saying Melda is any better or worse than other developers when it comes to pricing, but trying to figure out the most cost-effective purchase plan is giving me a serious analysis paralysis.

I'm torn. On one hand €99.50 seems like an ok price for the Finisher Bundle and you can obviously create really cool sounds with them. On the other hand I'm immensely bothered by the fact that I have no idea what's happening behind the scenes. I understand these are huge timesavers for most people but I feel I'd rather use several plugins that each do just one thing, just so I can replace any one of them if I need to and still get a similar sound out. Still, really cool sounds...

This reminded me of those "Will It Blend?" commercials. Fun stuff, if you're into that sort of thing.

I was planning to buy some of the Efektors. Could you please tell us which free effects you think are better?

Thus spoke Marco from Beat Magazine: So it looks like Larry did get the last one.

Uh... what does the Decapitator actually do? For some reason I'm a bit scared to try it out.