Melda MModernCompressor $9 (AD Exclusive)

[laglag]

https://www.audiodeluxe.com/products/meldaproduction-mmoderncompressor

[Mark Percil]

Do I need this if I have MTurboCompLE?

[Brian Walton]

44 minutes ago, Mark Percil said:

Do I need this if I have MTurboCompLE?

Need is always questionable.  I bought this before the super discount and I had LE.  What this plugin does that LE doesn't is to auto set settings based on the dynamic range you specify you want the track to be in.  It is pretty unique in that approach.  Some others will auto set things for you, but by the dynamic range you want is sort of something different. For that I thought it was fun to experiment with.  Wish I waited for this $9 sale though.

[bitflipper]

I bought MModernCompressor when it first came out, because that range control looked interesting. 

Turned out, dynamic range isn't something I even think about when setting up a compressor on individual tracks. I used it on a couple projects and haven't touched it since. I have two favorite compressors that cover every situation between them; the other dozen or so in my collection just take up space.

That said, well hey, it's just 9 bucks.

[Zolton]

Two additional perspectives on the question of "need" (or general usefulness) w/r/t MModernCompressor:

From what I can find (e.g., this description on Gearspace), it's less directly comparable to MTurboComp (LE) than to MDynamics. It seems like a stripped-down version of MDynamics built in the same framework -- so if you happen to have MDynamics, you probably definitely don't "need" MModernCompressor. (Though I've seen some folks say the "lite" version is nice and easy to use.)

More broadly, if you're firmly planning at some point in the future to buy one of the Melda bundles, these cheapie one-off sales come in handy to whittle the prices down to more budget-friendly levels. It definitely helps to know which doodads are in which bundle (Melda's comparison chart is handy for that), and whether a particular plugin thus gets you nearer your goal. 

Melda's policy is to lop 70% of your purchase price off the relevant bundle(s), and they assume anything bought from a reseller was purchased at half price. So the reduction to your eventual bundle price is ~35% of the full price of the plugin.

In this case, MModernCompressor sells on the Melda site for $53 and is included in both the MixingFX and MasteringFX bundle (as well as the TotalFX and MComplete bundles), so it would reduce the price of any of those bundles by around $18. If (and only if) you're dead-set on someday getting one of those bundles, buying one for less than the discount applied to the bundle cost is essentially saving a couple of bucks by starting a payment plan. (Ideally, the plugin is also useful in some way.)

Another way to consider "relative value" for Melda reseller sales, in the context of a future bundle buy, is what the plugin effectively costs in the context of each bundle (which are heavily discounted from the individual plugin prices). Just for instance, the MixingFX bundle has 33 plugs for ~$700; dividing the one-off prices of each plugin into that total proportionally (so the more expensive ones stay more expensive), MModernCompressor -- in the context of the MixingFX bundle -- is "worth" around $11.85 of the total price. The MasteringFX bundle has fewer plugins for the same price, so MModernCompressor is "worth" more to the value of that bundle -- a little less than $15.

Also, for anyone who is thinking of Melda bundles and can wait it out, there's at least one end-of-year sale (and maybe others) where all the bundles are half-price. That takes the biggest chunk out of the equation, but a strategic low-price grab here and there can add up, too.

[mettelus]

+1, I was going to mention the other reason would be if you are intending to get a Bundle "some day," but Zolton's post adds clarity as to the why of it.

Edited May 26, 2023 by mettelus

[Starship Krupa]

Ah, MModernCompressor, the neglected child of the MeldaProduction line.

It was the first one of their plug-ins outside of the FreeFX bundle upgrade that I bought. It was $25 in a half-price sale, I had my 10 euro newletter sign-up credit I was new enough with compressors that the "automatic" parameter setting sounded interesting, and I was in the market for a compressor that was more capable than MCompressor. I did the same thing as @bitflipper, played around with it and truly couldn't make head or tail of it. It even lacked the great "moving line" dynamics display that MCompressor has, as well as the ability to make custom curves.

I asked the people on the MeldaProduction forum what I needed to do to be able to use MModernCompressor and the impression I got from the responses seemed to indicate that most people who have a license got it as part of a bundle that also included MDynamics, so they kept trying to tell me how to use MDynamics to get the job done. Even Chandler, in his "all MeldaProduction compressors" round-up, glossed over it and when he did the wrap-up he said that he supposed he might use it for a voice over gig and paid no attention to its unique features.

My determination to master this first pro compressor I had paid money for was great, but I still didn't have a handle on it. A couple of Melda forum regulars gave me advice (mostly that I should just get MDynamics). It was suggested that I not waste time messing about with the automatic settings feature and use the rolling display for compression visualization. Vojtech himself tried to explain what the dynamic distribution graph was for and how it worked, but no luck. I recently saw a post from Vojtech himself saying that nobody

My deep dive revealed a cool feature that's front-facing (it exists in MDynamics, but it's 2 menus deep): there are various detector settings you can select, one of which is "psychoacoustic," which Vojtech says is supposed to mimic human hearing in some way. I tried it and really liked it.

I've lobbied him many times to add the MCompressor dynamic display, but he's kind of given up on developing MModernCompressor. He admitted that hardly anyone can figure out the "automatic" settings thing. I finally did and found no use for it. It requires you to decide ahead of time what dynamic range you want, which is useless for music, because who decides that ahead of time? You just set the parameters of a compressor by memory and by ear. Who starts out saying "this vocal needs a dynamic range of 20dB?"

It's a nice workhorse compressor for compressing. It has the clutter of that useless autocompression display, but has easy access to the detector settings, if those interest you. At this price, it's a good bundle coupon for MMixing and MMastering.