Melda Easter Bundle Madness!

[kitekrazy]

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

Can you expound on this? The only thing that comes to mind for me is that the installer used to not have options to unselect VST2, etc. But installation paths are choosable. As with most anything, directory junctions can bypass "set" installers so you can just let them go to defaults after the junctions have been made. I only get concerned for this with large installs, and Melda is by far one I do not care about (I own the MCompleteBundle, and the VST2 and VST3 folders are 21.2MB each... they are files updated per cycle). The sound packs are the only things HUGE; the plugins themselves are pretty lightweight.

One benefit with the GUI that most do not consider is that it also makes the plugins less CPU-intensive. I totally stunned a guy once  (sort of related to this) by saying "Are you interested in [making music] or playing a video game?" After that shock sunk in I said, "People who want to do things are unstoppable and focused.... they use the tools on hand and do great things. Those who don't really want to do things will find excuses or semi-related busy work to rationalize getting nothing done."

Most plugins install other information in those other Windows files.  They are often more than 10 yimes larger than the VST dlls.

[marcL]

4 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

I usually don't like managers either but once you have a bunch of their plugins frankly I love it.  It takes no time to update compared to the 20 something installers I'd need otherwise and there is a cleanup previous versions button that takes one second to complete.  

It also doesn't force install a bunch of stuff you don't own ala IKM.

Id understand the hate it you only had one or two.  But I've come to love the single download to update...and the updates add actual features and are fairly frequent.  It would be madness doing all those individually like I'm forced to with other devs.

I understand that if you have a lot of plugins of one provider it maybe handy to have a single installation manager. But as you said if you own only 1 or 2 plugins of him and want to install them on more than one machine, it's totally an overkill! Melda's at least does not download.

3 hours ago, mettelus said:

Can you expound on this? The only thing that comes to mind for me is that the installer used to not have options to unselect VST2, etc. But installation paths are choosable. As with most anything, directory junctions can bypass "set" installers so you can just let them go to defaults after the junctions have been made. I only get concerned for this with large installs, and Melda is by far one I do not care about (I own the MCompleteBundle, and the VST2 and VST3 folders are 21.2MB each... they are files updated per cycle). The sound packs are the only things HUGE; the plugins themselves are pretty lightweight.

There are many things that have to be considered with installation managers and I have listed several times annoyances with them:

• In respect to locations it is not only relevant that you can define the VST3/VST2 top locations, but also the folders underneath. I don't like that one provider like Melda creates its own subfolder grouping like EQ, Stereo, ..., another provider stores everything under its company name, another provider uses straight your target folder, and so on. In the end there is only chaos and no organization at all, because this goes on not only with the DLL's, but also with documentation, presets, configuration, uninstall files, ... E.g. I like to have all manuals/documents in one folder with subfolders for each provider, or because I sometimes use DAWs that don't have a plugin manager (they use the plugin folder's substructure) I group all plugins in the VST3 location under EQ, Dynamics, Stereo, Modulation, etc.
• Another thing that annoys me is that most installation managers (and sadly also more and more plugins) do network access.
• Each installation manager requires you to learn how it works, how it is configured, what does it do and so  on. Often a lot of it is not really documented (e.g. how you can transfer downloads to other computers).
• With Melda it is not really documented how you can let plugins of different versions run aside each other (sometimes I don't want to update the whole bunch).
• By the way I found out that with many plugins of different providers it is possible to locate manual or contents in your preferred places and just change a configuration value in the registry. I don't understand why such cool things are not used by the installation managers and why it is not documented! IMHO a good plugin provider should document all the locations where things are stored!

I could list a lot more of inconveniences, but I think in respect to Melda this is enough.

Edited April 7, 2023 by MarcL

[marcL]

7 hours ago, mettelus said:

One benefit with the GUI that most do not consider is that it also makes the plugins less CPU-intensive. I totally stunned a guy once  (sort of related to this) by saying "Are you interested in [making music] or playing a video game?" After that shock sunk in I said, "People who want to do things are unstoppable and focused.... they use the tools on hand and do great things. Those who don't really want to do things will find excuses or semi-related busy work to rationalize getting nothing done."

Though I totally agree with you (or that guy) that esthetics should not be the major reason to choose a plugin, there are some things for me to be considered to choose a plugin:

• a clear layout (where you can find things quickly, where you don't forget to set something); IMO this improves the time to setup a plugin
• it should be easy to set the knobs precisely (I like to use the mouse wheel and if there is a fine tuning, e.g. Ctrl+wheel or Shift+wheel)
• It is very handy if it's possible to quickly enter a value as a number. E.g. for gain staging: If I know that the output is 1.7dB too loud I like to simply click on the output gain value and enter the new value numberically (though Melda supports to enter a value, it takes too many steps IMHO).
• legibility of the labels and values (yes I prefer if numerical values are displayed)

Hence I think the GUI is still important for music software 😄!

[Anxiousmofo]

2 hours ago, trager said:

It’s against the forum rules to include an affiliate code in your post. Edit: See the pinned thread, linked below.

Everybody be cool-- it's the cops!

 

 

[Brian Walton]

2 hours ago, trager said:

It’s against the forum rules to include an affiliate code in your post. Edit: See the pinned thread, linked below.

I've been around for a while and am familiar with the rule.

I didn't post a link or even list any specific products.  

The referral code gives the user of that code a 20% off discount and Starship Krupa provided quite the detail of how it works, and the 10% store credit (not money) I would get if someone actually made a purchase using it.

 

If you want transparency I've made zero credits let alone "gain for profit"

 

When I first used a Referral coupon from someone else, you can bet I was appreciative of it getting a 20% discount on my purchase.

[mibby]

1 hour ago, Brian Walton said:

I've been around for a while and am familiar with the rule.

I didn't post a link or even list any specific products.  

The referral code gives the user of that code a 20% off discount and Starship Krupa provided quite the detail of how it works, and the 10% store credit (not money) I would get if someone actually made a purchase using it.

 

If you want transparency I've made zero credits let alone "gain for profit"

 

When I first used a Referral coupon from someone else, you can bet I was appreciative of it getting a 20% discount on my purchase.

It's win-win-win! 

Buyer is happy, Referrer is happy, Melda is happy!  😁

[Wookiee]

Sharing of anything that you profit from is not permitted. Period.