Life WITHOUT Waves Plugins (Not a deal)

[abacab]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I know that MDrummer is full of great rhythms, whole songs even, and they're broken down into sections, but as far as being able to use those sections, I'm toast. I can get it as far as being able to play and loop one of its internal songs' intro, but only the intro. Can't figure out how to trigger the verse or chorus beats or anything else.

I like Melda in general too, but here's a suggestion for a drum track creation option that is a bit more straightforward: give the EZdrummer demo a try, 10 days fully featured with the factory library. If you don't care for the kits, you can use the available MIDI out to drive your own sounds using another plugin to replace or layer them.  https://www.toontrack.com/product/ezdrummer-3/

In my opinion, EZdrummer offers a workflow with simple to understand, intuitive tools such as Song Creator and Bandmate for ease in creating drum tracks to accompany your songs. It comes with a large factory library of MIDI drum groove patterns, plus you can import your own user patterns to the library.

Use Song Creator to establish a song structure:

 

Use Bandmate to find matching suggestions for your songs grooves by dragging in an audio or MIDI file you are using in your song.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by abacab

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

One of the primary issues with Melda plugins is you have to read manuals even for the stuff which should be straight forward. All plugins have controls with different names than you'd see somewhere else and there's extra stuff you can click and see no effect yet it leeks like it's doing something.

There's also some annoying UI quirks, like not being able to type numerical values using your keyboard, every single thing that could be condensed into a single interface always seems to open a popup with even more settings you didn't even know existed and so on.

Sure these plugins are powerful and full of features but your stuff is only as useful as how easily others can learn it.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, abacab said:

here's a suggestion for a drum track creation option that is a bit more straightforward: give the EZdrummer demo a try

Well, I wasn't really in the market for such a solution. I play drums, and coming up with my own beats is a big part of the fun of making a song. I have a license for MDrummer because I have a license to use all of their products.

What I'd like to be able to do is treat it like I do Boom or Break Tweaker: mostly program my own beats but sometimes use one or two of their canned measures, or program my own measures into the slots and trigger them. I think Roland's beat boxes worked this way from about the TR606 on. You could do single notes, make patterns out of notes and make songs out of patterns. And they had about half of the pattern slots pre-loaded with factory beats.

I've never done very well with song creation tools; it always feels like they want me to already know too many things about the song. I've never been someone who could write an outline of something first. In school when a writing assignment called for an outline, I'd always have to finish writing the paper, then write the outline using the paper as a guide. Which I suspect is not the way they envisioned it happening.

[abacab]

4 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Well, I wasn't really in the market for such a solution. I play drums, and coming up with my own beats is a big part of the fun of making a song.

Well, with Bandmate you could drag in a clip that you played, and it would make AI based suggestions. Might be useful for coming up with variations that you hadn't considered...

Since I'm not a drummer, I need all the help I can get. Especially the part about a drummer only having two arms and two feet, LOL!!!

Edited May 4, 2023 by abacab

[mettelus]

MDrummer could use an easy screen, that is for sure. Most music uses standard beats without numerous variations on them, and all the common controls are on one screen. If you want to dive in deeper, great, but if not, you shouldn't have to. One of the "features" that wreaks havoc is that there is a buried setting to randomize the MIDI key (in that octave) for the beat sequence, so as you are working even within the DAW it will vary the MIDI note as it is putzing around. You suddenly go from one beat sequence to another even though you just wanted it static. Almost like creating your own Tom Sawyer rendition for every song you make without that setting shut off.

@Starship Krupa Those four columns on the quick setup are pretty useful to get started/loaded. The left two are for the kit and the right two are for the drum patterns (in generates them for all sections there). You can easily generate kits/FX, merge with another to build on that (the samples available are extensive), and get patterns initially created, but you can also easily overdo it and blow the kit up sonically, but even after that is done editing what was created isn't a simple task. A lot to drill into for something that should be simpler. In fact, a pop up that focuses everything needed to edit right in view would be great. I think due to its complexity, there was an effort to get everything into the minimum number of tabbed pages, but if there was something like clicking on the floor tom and BOOM... pop up a single page with only everything needed to edit that floor tom would be an awesome change. Too many menus.

I started a drum map to direct fire the kit pieces long ago, then thought I shouldn't have to; but as time goes by, I may end up having that as the "solution," although it bypasses a massive amount of the plugin by doing so. The samples are in a proprietary format, so you cannot simply import them into another VSTi either.

[bitflipper]

The overarching theme here is that Melda could be your one-stop solution because they offer GOBS of plugins - but not all of them are necessarily best-in-class. 

Anyone looking for a single vendor to switch from Waves to will be frustrated. Everybody knows my opinion of Waves the company, but I have to admit that nobody else offers the same breadth of products with consistently high quality. Some have the quality but not the breadth (e.g. FabFilter), some have breadth but not the quality (e.g. Plug & Mix). You really have to take the buffet approach when building your toolkit.

Semi-related rant...a lot of users moan about Melda's UIs. Voxengo often gets called "ugly". Many also complain about ValhallaDSP's utilitarian look. To those whiners I say man up and invest the time to learn what these products can do. Nobody's gonna critique your mix by saying "I can hear that you used some ugly plugins". /rant

[bitflipper]

14 hours ago, Craig N said:

When I was in my teens through my thirties I could sing along (growl along?) with death or black metal, but now that I'm nearing 50, my voice just can't tolerate it for more than a few seconds - probably not a good sign for the health of the vocal cords.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I took pride in my John Kay impersonation. When I sang "I like to dream..." all the shiny was stripped from my throat after the "I". Now my voice sounds like that all the time. Some say it has "character", when they're trying to be charitable. Wish I'd been kinder to my vocal cords in the early days.

[kitekrazy1]

What's holding Melda back is lack of how to videos.  Every plugin looks like a rocket science. 

 

Meanwhile I think T-Racks are often ignored.

Edited May 4, 2023 by kitekrazy

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

What's holding Melda back is lack of how to videos.  Every plugin looks like a rocket science. 

 

Meanwhile I think T-Racks are often ignored.

It's not that we ignore T-Racks. Much like every IK Multimedia product, our interest in it only lasts 180 seconds. After that, IK has to pay us 20 bucks to have 180 seconds more.

[dubdisciple]

When Melda tries to make more graphical interfaces they are actually worse. The utilitarian interfaces were not the most user friendly, but the intern art is not significantly  more user friendly and plain ugly. With that said, it is a mild price to pay imo for the bang you get for the buck.  In terms of pure value, l think only IK comes close to Melda in terms of  matching a balance to Waves selection and quality for the price.  I got over pretty but irrelevant graphics when the wow factor of the cables moving in Reason 1 worse off.

[mettelus]

4 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

What's holding Melda back is lack of how to videos.

+1000. So many of the videos posted have some variation of lacking presentation, become outdated due to updates, or lacking real-world application as walk throughs.

Ironically, my most recommended video remains Dan Worrall's "FabFilter Pro-Q - EQ Tips & Tricks" from July 5, 2010. I do not even own the plugin, but the reason I have always recommended that is because it packs a buttload of useful information into 10 minutes on using an EQ properly - things a new EQ user will readily grasp and be able to use (regardless of EQ brand). The application, presentation, and scripting of that video are stellar. Unfortunately, the converse of people rambling or posting content just to make a "weekly" seems to be more the norm, and I am often frustrated that those tend to be the first hits when looking for something (more Google's ad engine there).

[bitflipper]

22 minutes ago, mettelus said:

"FabFilter Pro-Q - EQ Tips & Tricks" from July 5, 2010

Surely that video can't be that old, can it? I mean, I was in my 50's when I first saw it...oh.

[kitekrazy1]

I wanna see Deals without Waves plugins. 

[mettelus]

Quick note (for myself mostly): I spent Saturday morning deep diving into MDrummer and noting workflow issues, lacking features one would expect, and an interesting but repeatable bug that should not have occurred that crashed Studio One to desktop with a brief popup of "MDrummer performed an illegal operation." That particular issue was on using the sample import feature, which is nothing more than a text search AFAICT (and has its own issues as a result), but why it did an operation to crash out a DAW is beyond me at this point.

I will have to see if I have time to script that into a video worth wasting people's time, but it remains that documentation is lacking (the manual can only be gotten from within the VST), mouse clicking is not fluid (you have to drill into menus often where buttons would be more appropriate), sample preview is non-existent (requiring drum kit replacement to mouse click the preview... this also affects sample import functionality), rhythm editing is not fluid (one specific is when editing velocity of a solod instrument, the bar underneath it still shows ALL pieces, so touching that also affects them all (very bad)... even solod you need to work on the diamonds for that piece... nice small target that precludes mouse drawing across them all), the randomization is buried in the rhythm editor menu (on by default), and the VST does not remember instantiation (specifically LIMITER ON (a must!), and 8x for sampling in my case).

Overall, MDrummer has a lot of capability and potential, but workflow wasn't at the fore. Kit/rhythm generation is awesome, but the ability to edit afterwards is not. It has undergone a major overhaul since I have owned it, but remains one I worry about if people purchased it specifically (i.e., not included in a bundle).

[DeeringAmps]

3 minutes ago, mettelus said:

Saturday morning deep diving into MDrummer and noting workflow issues, lacking features

EZDrummer is easier, and Superior Drummer is well; Superior. 
just sayin’

t

[mettelus]

Roger that. I am definitely not defending/promoting it, since I have never used it in a composition. I was more taking the time to understand it and critique it (I tend to be rather brutal in some cases for this), since this has been on my to do list for years. Workflow trumps capabilities in many cases for me, so the experience left me wondering how many are truly using it fully and the time they are investing to do so.

Ironically, the bug that buried Studio One is new, since I have run that same (ineffective) process in the past without that issue. I always chuckle when a VST can bury a DAW (morbid sense of humor, I guess). Years ago I buried SONAR on purpose right before tracking a friend (they couldn't see), and when they asked what was so funny I just said. "Oh, nothing."

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

On 5/4/2023 at 6:53 PM, dubdisciple said:

When Melda tries to make more graphical interfaces they are actually worse. The utilitarian interfaces were not the most user friendly, but the intern art is not significantly  more user friendly and plain ugly. With that said, it is a mild price to pay imo for the bang you get for the buck.  In terms of pure value, l think only IK comes close to Melda in terms of  matching a balance to Waves selection and quality for the price.  I got over pretty but irrelevant graphics when the wow factor of the cables moving in Reason 1 worse off.

This is an old issue some developers have, which is thinking User Interfaces are just a beauty tack on top of functionality. Then you either end with the worst skeumorphic abominations to mankind (Like Butch Vig Vocals) or interfaces that only make sense and are intuitive to the person that created them (Like Ardour/Harrison).

[bats brew]

i use waves plugs,

and have never had an issue.

 

i just dont' get it, the complaining.

 

i've boiled it down to just about a dozen regular plugs i use, 

and pull out all the rest.

[Brian Walton]

2 hours ago, batsbrew said:

i use waves plugs,

and have never had an issue.

 

i just dont' get it, the complaining.

 

i've boiled it down to just about a dozen regular plugs i use, 

and pull out all the rest.

It is because you never had an issue.  Many of us have.

Once what you paid for stops working and they ask you to pay just as much as you paid for the plugins in the first place for support to use them again you might understand the plight.  Or if you ever have multiple computers with limited USB slots or not wanting to spend time transferring and connecting to the internet.  Or your shell scanner takes an extra 10 minutes when you need to add plugins to your folder.  Or maybe it will be when they force you into a sub without a perpetual path.  There are more reasons to complain than not to with Waves given other options on the market .

 

 

[smde]

5 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

" interfaces that only make sense and are intuitive to the person that created them"

You nailed it!