Starship Krupa

The UI looks a bit intimidating, kind of like the telephone switchboard in an old hotel.

The other ones I'm considering are the Maag EQ4 and Millenia NSEQ-2. The Millenia assures me that it has a 300V tube and discrete J-FET signal path, which is pretty impressive for something that is, in actuality, a computer program.

Okay, I already have all of the Unfiltered Audio stuff I want, and then elysia mpressor, which, by the way, man o MAN.

I guess it's one of these knob EQ's. I'm not that savvy with knob EQ's, but I might as well have a nice one.

Lindell TE-100 has the magic pixie dust, eh?

20 hours ago, Daryl L. Samuel said:

How can I fix that?

What did you do to try this? Did you edit one of the segmented meter images?

On 6/26/2021 at 3:27 PM, Brian Walton said:

Melda has free updates for life.  You can't blame them if you bought the same plugin from them multiple times

Their site actually warns you that you already own a license when you look at the plug-in or bundle's page. There's nothing about Meldaproduction's licensing or upgrade policies that bothers me. Other companies will happily sell me bundles that contain things I've already paid for at full price.

The only purchases I've ever regretted are when something better or less expensive comes along before I have time to get enough use out of it or if it turns out to be a CPU eater. And for both of those, I present Gain Match. Not an expensive plug-in, but I started noticing playback burps while using it, then shortly thereafter snagged a bundle that happened to have MCompare. And someone else recently came out with a freeware plug-in that is supposed to do the same thing.

Something that does what Gain Match does shouldn't be a CPU eater, so I didn't even notice it when I was demoing it. Checking levels on two different tracks and then setting a knob so that they match shouldn't bog down a DAW.

There are some that I bought years ago that I no longer use due to having gotten ones that do their job better, but they helped me learn. I can't blame SoundSpot that my ears have developed and now I want more precise controls and metering (Cyclone is still a favorite mid/side compressor).

That is a lovely piece. The flute is a great lead instrument. I like the beat, it gives it a New Age/Techno flavor.

Armchair mix suggestion: push the drum machine back in the mix a little with some reverb with predelay. Freebie suggestion: Orilriver.

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If there was a mixer undo stack it would be completely discrete from the editing stack.

Okay, separate then. Different commands for undo last editing move and undo last control move. That would be great.

I suggested this when the Tempo Track was added, but then recently I noticed that Piano Roll View already has it for the Articulations Map and Drum Pane.

It might not even be intentional, rather an artifact created by the presence of scroll bars, but it's at least some visual indication that there are hidden screen elements that can be pulled down to open. Looks kinda slick, actually.

I'd like to see these added at either or both ends of the Track View Time Ruler.

16 hours ago, Studious said:

Since I will not be recording at all, would it work if everything was on one compact solution with ONE hard drive?

I don't see why not. Anything you get would be able to handle that, as long as it has 8G of RAM and an SSD. You don't mention having a zillion FX or huge sample libraries.

Yes, it would be nice not to tie up double the number of i/o's when using mono processors (which I understand is becoming more popular).

What I want ain't rocket science: I want any action that would set the "dirty" bit (that is, put an asterisk after the file name in the header to let you know it hasn't been saved) to be Undoable. I know I said "for mixing moves," but that's just the area where I most often get bitten.

The asterisk tells me that the program is tracking those actions, so I would like to leverage that.

Quote

There are no plans to make this part of undo - it would be very confusing.

@Noel Borthwick, for whom would this be confusing? I find current behavior confusing as I find it hard to remember what actions are undoable. I came from Mixcraft, where pretty much every action is undoable, including plug-in settings. No confusion: I did something. If I hit Ctrl-Z the action will reversed. Up in the Edit menu, it says "Pan adj." next to Undo/Redo.

Of course, as with all such sweeping changes to behavior, for those who only want the limited set of actions to be undoable, this would be a settable preference rather than a mandatory change.

Yes, the video was odd. It only showed the UI in action for a few seconds, the rest of the music was (presumably) a full mix that if it used the processor, had no "dry" sections to compare it to.

Certainly looks worth the download, though.

It's going to be the elysia mpressor for me this round. I demo'd both it and Unfiltered Audio's ZIP.

mpressor sounds like it puts me in that dbx 165 zone that I've been trying to find for years. It sounds really, really good. The control that limits the amount of gain reduction was immediately useful, and it even has a few "creative" tricks up its sleeve.

Wa-hoo! Voucher reset!

9 minutes ago, scook said:

Almost a whole page discussing commercial software in a freeware thread.

Well, I'm sensitive to topic adherence myself, so I try to make sure to mention something free in every post. ReaFir, various bits of the Melda free bundle, annual freebies from A|A|S, Pluginboutique giveaways, Freakshow Industries' "steal this plug-in."

I'm fine with comparing commercial FX to freebies and talking about how we use freeware FX. I think it's helpful to hip freeware searchers to the fact that certain dealers and manufacturers run regular giveaways of payware products, or that commonly used freeware suites can be upgraded for very little money. These developers do a lot of work to provide us with loss leaders to pique interest in their commercial stuff, so I don't think it's off limits to mention their other products.

Besides, it keeps the thread near the top.

In freeware FX news, today we have a couple from Fuse Audio Labs, the VREV-666 Spring Reverb and RS-W2395C Baxandall EQ. Yay spring reverb, it's like spring reverb Spring lately.

Also, for Glitchmachines fans, Fracture has been updated to v 1.3 with a new UI similar to Convex, and new presets. It's also VST3, so you can keep v 1.2 around for legacy projects. I don't think they have the same plug-in identifier as after I installed 1.3, 1.2 still appeared in my fx lists.

The new Fracture has a more intuitive layout, so it's easier to understand what effect the controls have. There's still plenty of the stochastic uncertainty that's part of what Glitchmachines are about. Cheers to them for giving a freebie such a nice upgrade.

I, too, got Objeq Delay in that PluginBoutique giveaway. My advice: play with it. ? I know that MTurboDelay seems like it's the last delay anyone would need to buy, but Objeq Delay leverages the A|A|S physical modeling technology in unique ways. It's not just for demolition, of course, despite abacab's and my destructive tendencies.

It's funny, A|A|S' plug-ins are some of my favorites (I have many soundpacks and all of the Sessions) but the only ones I've ever paid for were part of a Humble Bundle, so pennies on the dollar. I did do a service to the user community by sending them a detailed polite request email about their installers' behavior, spewing VST2's into every folder with the string "VST" in the name, 32-bit VST3's, AAX plug-ins, ad nauseum. And they've since cleaned up their act. I like to think my note helped inspire that.

OB Freeware FX content: get on A|A|S mailing list. They often give out free soundpacks around the Winter holidays.

On 6/26/2021 at 8:41 AM, Colin Nicholls said:

There's a lot to like in this theme, and as I've said before I'm loath to be critical but we all have to recognize the theming is intensely subjective and everyone is different. 

The clip background color is, to me, not quite right. In the context of the application UI, they seem "washed out" to me. If I wanted to use the theme, I would abandon the "dark on selected" goal and flip it so that the clips were normally quite dark, almost black, and then get successively washed out as they unsolo/mute/archive etc.

I find the PC EQ Grid on console view strips too bright, especially on strips that don't have PC enabled. I'd go darker on the grid lines.

But that's me. I'm not designing the theme, you are.

No, no, no, your critiques are most valuable. It's not possible for me to come up with a "public consumption" theme without feedback. Also, as I get better with Paint.NET, I can touch up things that were, at the time, the best I could come up with. Some of them are experiments anyway. And I can come up with a version for the public that is not the same as the one I use at home. Same with any creative pursuit, one can't please everyone with every aspect. Especially with all of the options and workflows available in Cakewalk. I had made it so that in one mode you couldn't even read clip names. And my poor clip fade lines, barely visible.

I'll take another look at the EQ grids; it may have come from my tendency to want to use the same colors wherever possible, which....doesn't always scale. The goal being coherence and consistency. However, as it is said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It's a fine line, isn't it, between foolish....and....clever.

As for the clip backgrounds, that's part of my idea to use Theme Editor to make the program more usable for myself (and maybe to others). To me, the high-contrast background says "active," while the other ones are "greyed out." I think it's appropriate for a "dark" theme. Tungsten's Clip Pane and Piano Roll have always looked to me like "Mercury with the brightness and contrast turned down." This comes out of frustration with Tungsten: why would unselected clips be higher contrast.

I get that if you're used to Mercury-derived themes and having the brightest color be your "active," that setting the darkest color as "active" seems counterintuitive. This one's supposed to be "a dark theme done right" and it might take being a daily user of dark themes for it to make sense.

There's a thing that I do where knowing which clips are active and which are not that is highly critical: acoustic drum editing and comping. I have 4 tracks of drums, each take grouped. If I mess up because one or more of the clips wasn't selected (which can happen even with grouped clips), it can louse things up pretty badly.

Since I darkened the active clip backgrounds (and went with higher contrast grid lines), I feel more confident about which clips are in what state, and I'm able to concentrate better and work faster, stay in the flow. I guess if there were demand I could do a "vintage" version with Tungstenesque clip backgrounds, but I have no idea whether anyone but me is using my themes. One kid on Facebook said he was using EVA 01 (probably an anime fan). That's the extent of my known user base?.

5 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Some of the Melda plugins haven't turned out to be as useful as I'd anticipated. Spectral Delay is one of them, along with MMultibandChorus and that multiband autopanner, forget what it's called. And speaking of compressors, MModernCompressor was frustratingly unintuitive, and even after figuring out the UI was ultimately just another compressor.

I hear ya about the "MB" thing. I understand its potential, but in practice, I've not been able to make use of it, no matter how many video tutorials I watch.

LOL MModernCompressor! The first non FreeFX plug-in I bought, and the one that gets the least love from either the users or Meldaproduction. I rode that thing like a rented mule until I figured out the advantage it has that none of their others do: front-facing access to multiple detector modes, including my favorite, psychoacoustic.

I have MSpectralDynamicsle, which lacks the noise sampling feature, and I want that. Fortunately, Vojtech has mentioned that he would like to add that to the LE version.

Per the actual topic here, ReaFir, is a pretty amazing surgical tool (and FREE). You can sample a section of audio and then apply reduction to that spectrum, also gate or compress individual frequencies or ranges by drawing your own freehand curves. I use it to clean up camcorder audio.

3 hours ago, abacab said:

Have you ever just looped a drum pattern and listened to the mayhem that these type of processors can do to a drum track, especially when the attack transients are removed?

Oh yes I have. I'm a drummer and I like to loop my own playing and then destroy it. The first plug-in I did this with was MComb, which is one of the hidden monsters in the Free bundle. Play to a click, then sync MComb to the tempo and it's hectically Reznoresque. I have almost all of the Glitchmachines and Unfiltered Audio processors and love to tempo sync drum processing.

I also like to do the ambient soundscape thing, I have all 3 of the Freakshow Industries (also free if you know the trick, but I chose to pay for them) processors.

This reminds me....

At least you all got to use referral codes! After popping $25 for someone else's FreeFX upgrade, I bought my first plug-in directly from Meldaproduction before I knew about referral codes. I had my 10 credits from the newsletter. It was a half-off sale, so I got it for $15.

(It was what I suspect may be the lowest-selling and least-used product in their line, MModernCompressor ?. But I rode that thing like a rented mule until I figured out some tricks it can do. If you want quick access to a variety of detector types, there's nothing better. It's the only plug-in where they're all front-facing. I'm especially a fan of the "psychoacoustic" detector on vocals)

24 minutes ago, abacab said:

Melda is probably the BEST freeware FX suite available!!!

I also have the paid version of MSpectralDelay. Lots of sound design potential there!

I can't think of another one that is as comprehensive and useful.

I got MSpectralDelay as a loyalty gift from Meldaproduction when it first came out, and while it sure seems like it can do a lot, I've yet to get my head around what it does. Is it like a Glitchmachines or Freakshow Industries effect where you're not supposed to be entirely in control of it? Throw it on, start twisting the knobs and see what happens? It has similar controls to Unfiltered Audio Fault. or maybe SpecOps, but while I can get pretty quick results with those, it's not so for MSpectralDelay. It's the one I point to when I make the case that Meldaproduction's documentation (and sometimes ad copy) is not informative enough.

Vojtech's standard retort is that it's not his job to explain how a compressor works, but I contend that it might be part of his job to explain what a "spectral delay" does. Just a simple "try it on X material with X settings while adjusting parameters Y and Z" would be so welcome. My head can only get so far imagining what something is capable of, with stuff that goes that far off the beaten path, I need more guidance.

1 hour ago, mibby said:

if you own some Melda plugins already, log on to your account and check your bundle upgrade price

This. I had no idea, during the last 60% off sale I happened to scroll down and saw that the MEssentialFX bundle would cost me a whopping €17, and I had 13 credits in the account. So I posted about the free bundle upgrade, with my referral code, and sat back until enough rolled in.

And BTW, for the "when will they fix that fugly UI" crowd, here's what's coming up in v. 15:

The answer is: now, although I myself actually prefer flat and functional.

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

An added plus: all the free fx are feature-limited versions of their paid counterparts, so it's a great way to experiment and see which ones you might be interested in upgrading to the full version. I've bought a few Melda products as a direct result of using their free versions and liking them.

(OK, I admit I've purchased more than just a few Melda products, ~40 of them at last count. It's quality stuff and very nicely priced when they go on sale, with a random selection of 4 of them half-price every week.)

It's a successful business model, that loss-leader. It's one of the things I really respect about the way Vojtech runs the business. Some of those 37 plug-ins are the best I've seen in their categories. MComb is a favorite, MAutopan, MPhaser as well. MAnalyzer is, IMO, better than the Voxengo SPAN that is so popular (and rightly so). I use MStereoscope on my drum overhead bus on every single project that has drums. The test tone and noise generators, where else can you find those? The newest one, MTuner, isn't just a polyphonic tuner, it's a pitch-to-MIDI converter. He added a tap tempo to MMetronome after I asked in the forum. All of these can be used in their free versions.

I had my great compression breakthrough with the stock version of MCompressor, which still has my favorite visual display of how the compressor is set and what it's doing to the sound. My friend showed me the 3dB/3dB recipe for beginners: to make a vocal "pop," set a sharp knee compressor at 4:1 so that it's reducing gain an average of 3dB. Then use a parametric EQ to sweep for the "honk" frequency, and cut that by 3dB. Highpass it around 200Hz, and suddenly I could crank my lead vocal without having it sound like a school auditorium PA. I use them whenever I'm teaching someone how to use basic processors.

Give me the FreeFX bundle and I'll happily mix anything that was reasonably well-recorded.

Suggestion: spend a little time going through the available styles. The stock one is a "light" style that I don't care for. They're skinnable like Cakewalk is.

Here's my MCompressor with some tweaking of the color scheme:

8 hours ago, Bapu said:

Make Ed Great Again?

Mixing Ed's Guitar Again?

 

Maybe Erik Gets All.

Most of what really piques my interest these days (since acquiring the Meldaproduction MEssentialsFX bundle) is things that go sclerch in the night. So whenever these come around, it's another nutso Unfiltered Audio effect (or two) for my collection. Of course, I already have BYOME, where they kind of give away the store in one plug-in....no matter, collect 'em all, it's more Jell-O to throw at the wall when I want to prime the pump.

I know this is not free, but for any free fx hound who has been using (or hasn't been using) the Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle, they are running one of their 60% off all bundles promotions, which includes the upgrade to the FreeFX Bundle.

The last time Meldaproduction ran this promo I gifted two friends with this upgrade and the price came to $7 with the first-timer benefits.

This how you do it: sign up for the newsletter, which gives you €10 credits. Then at checkout, apply a referral code (ask here and someone will probably drop you theirs, as they will benefit) to take 20% off the price. Apply your €10, and it brings the cost down around $7. For this you add some really nice features (access to the Preset Exchange and Styles are worth the small amount, but you also get access to their deeper features as well). This applies to any of their bundles, of course, but I figure first-timers are more likely to be doing the FreeFX upgrade.

The Sonitus FX that come with Cakewalk sound good, but their UI's are tiny and looking kinda dated (they also can't be used in other DAW's due to being DXi). These are good replacements. 37 plug-ins for $7 is the best deal I can think of.

(Also, for existing users, go to your My Licenses page and check out what your personal bundle prices are. You might be as surprised as I was to see how much you can get for little money)

For any first time buyers, be sure to sign up for the newsletter and get your 10 euros credit. With the 20% referral credit (Brian beat me to it, so I'll let him collect the points?), it brings the cost of the Free-to-Full upgrade down around $7.