pseudopop

Thanks guys. I went for the $179 deal. It's a bit more money than I wanted to spend at the moment, but after some investigation I'm pretty sure that it's the best deal I could get for Chromaphone, String Studio and Ultra Analog. I have some of the player versions but upgrading them to full versions would cost about the same amount, so I don't think that would have been a viable path for me. For my purposes there is a lot of overlap between Ultra Analog and IK's Syntronik, but I found enough good sounds to justify the purchase. Also, I don't actually have a lot of synths so having these expanded my choices significantly. I guess now I have to start using synths in my music...

How are their other products? They are offering me their professional series for $179, which includes Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, String Studio VS-3, Objeq Delay, Strum GS-2 and Lounge Lizard EP-4. Or I could get just the Chromaphone 3 for $73.87 at Don't Crack. I'm going to download some demos but second opinions are welcome.

It was $89.40 in April 2019. But I doubt it'll go as low as that for a while.

I read "WaveWorm" and thought: "Wow, that's a really cool name for a plugin. I wonder what it does?"

Thanks Reid, you have me thoroughly convinced. 🙂

I pulled the trigger the last time this deal was on the table. Reading some reviews and articles I sensed a bit of hype surrounding the service, but the way I see it is that as long as the company is serious about it, any AI-based service is inevitably going to get better and better as time goes by. If they are doing things right it's only a matter of time until their AI is going to do a better job than any human. At that point $99 is a meaningless amount of money. Or they are going fail miserably and exit the business a year from now. It can really go either way. They have been in the business for five years now, so I'm hoping that's a sign that they're doing ok.

@Reid Rosefelt Is it just a sketching library or is it good enough to replace something like Session Strings Pro as a "background orchestra"? How does this compare to Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra (which I have) or to The Orchestra (the basic one, which I've been thinking about)?

Synths 1 DX and Synths II Abyss have been Audio Plugin Deals freebies before, so check before you buy the Collection 6. Getting the remaining four instruments separately is cheaper than buying the collection ($48.80 vs $55, using the code). Also, I received a "we miss you" coupon in June worth $10. You may have that too. Coupons won't stack but it's a better discount for anything under $50.

Maybe check the snare wires? Anywhoo, it looks like this is just a groove library and you don't have access to the individual instruments. Is that correct?

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.

Sadly, no. The business went belly up as its customers rushed to its competitor who offered a sack of soil and a dozen decorative rocks. Selling dirt cheap is a race to the bottom.