Melda BF Sale

[Larry Shelby]

2 minutes ago, Grem said:

Well I almost missed this one. Glad I was able to get in on this. I was able to get the Mixing Bundle for $115, that includes tax. 

Picked up 16 extra plugins!! Been looking at this bundle for a while. So now I got the Creative Bundle and the Mixing Bundle. But my Turbo Reverb license is still separate from the Creative Bundle. Wonder why?

The Bundles include MTurboReverb LE, so, if you bought the full version, that may be why
you were able to keep it

[Grem]

Just now, cclarry said:

if you bought the full version, that may be why
you were able to keep it

Yes, I did get the full version. Got it on sale too!!

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, Piotr said:

It is kind of mindless and developer's laziness... Installer is the easiest part and should be selective, customizable in user choices.

Doesn't it seem like in most cases (Melda an exception) the installer is an "off-the-shelf" component? Or there are maybe 3 variations?

I think most development environments do come with a pre-rolled InstallShield component, and Steinberg and Avid may include code in their dev kits. My guess as to why developers spew 32-bit/AAX plug-ins around is that it's easier to have unnecessary ones installed than it is to answer support inquiries from people who chose the wrong options and now can't see their plug-ins in whatever host they're using.

And it's amazing how often those people will go straight to some forum and declare that "I bought plug-in XXX and installed it and it didn't work" leading to other people who read their posts drawing the conclusion that plug-in XXX is "incompatible" or "has problems" with that host. And so the legend is perpetuated that the host/plug-in has "compatibility issues."

I've seen posts from people who come here and say that they've read on the forum about people having trouble getting CbB to recognize their SPlum plugs and saying that they're scared to make the upgrade lest CbB "break" their SPlum installation. When the solution is a 30-second trip to Preferences to add a folder name to their VST search path! We forum regulars are pretty savvy compared to users out there who treat the software as a black box and leave all their Preferences on the defaults and would never dream of editing a config file or a Drum Map. We had a guy the other day wanting help getting SONAR LE working on his system. I told him he was in for a real treat.

Give a user options and they will abuse them (former tech support tech here). Do most users even know whether they need to install the AAX versions of their plug-ins? What if they don't install them, then decide to try Pro Tools First? Probably easier to just  put the AAX's in there for them just in case.

(BTW, for those who know how to set Windows Environment Variables, a type-saving trick is to make one called VST_PATH that is set to your VST2 directory. Smart installers and DAW's will then default to that location.)

[mettelus]

29 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Do most users even know whether they need to install the AAX versions of their plug-ins?

This was why Melda said they removed the ability to exclude 32-bit plugins. I assume they were getting support requests asking if users needed to install them or not.

[Piotr]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Doesn't it seem like in most cases (Melda an exception) the installer is an "off-the-shelf" component? Or there are maybe 3 variations?

I think most development environments do come with a pre-rolled InstallShield component, and Steinberg and Avid may include code in their dev kits. My guess as to why developers spew 32-bit/AAX plug-ins around is that it's easier to have unnecessary ones installed than it is to answer support inquiries from people who chose the wrong options and now can't see their plug-ins in whatever host they're using.

And it's amazing how often those people will go straight to some forum and declare that "I bought plug-in XXX and installed it and it didn't work" leading to other people who read their posts drawing the conclusion that plug-in XXX is "incompatible" or "has problems" with that host. And so the legend is perpetuated that the host/plug-in has "compatibility issues."

I've seen posts from people who come here and say that they've read on the forum about people having trouble getting CbB to recognize their SPlum plugs and saying that they're scared to make the upgrade lest CbB "break" their SPlum installation. When the solution is a 30-second trip to Preferences to add a folder name to their VST search path! We forum regulars are pretty savvy compared to users out there who treat the software as a black box and leave all their Preferences on the defaults and would never dream of editing a config file or a Drum Map. We had a guy the other day wanting help getting SONAR LE working on his system. I told him he was in for a real treat.

Give a user options and they will abuse them (former tech support tech here). Do most users even know whether they need to install the AAX versions of their plug-ins? What if they don't install them, then decide to try Pro Tools First? Probably easier to just  put the AAX's in there for them just in case.

(BTW, for those who know how to set Windows Environment Variables, a type-saving trick is to make one called VST_PATH that is set to your VST2 directory. Smart installers and DAW's will then default to that location.)

I understand there are some not experienced users and it's completely ok.  Nobody ever blame them or developers wanting to help them.

But there is the simplest  under the sun solution just provide choices somewhere while keeping default install with everything everywhere.

There are many examples in software world for that. With an info like 'if you are unsure just keep on defaults'. There is no valid explanation for approach like 'because  some of users don't know what they have and what they want let's install everything everywhere without asking and choices for ALL users'

Please let me name this approach - it is pure lame... Something they should  be shamed of...

I ma really tired of lame install after which I must clean my disks again and again... I tried just to forbid access to some places like Steinberg, Avid etc dirs... but guess what... The latest, newest technology from Waves, Wave Central. was unable to work properly and install plugins...

So probably I would need to create a script running once per a week or so to clean all those dirs ?

 

[Promidi]

10 hours ago, mettelus said:

This was why Melda said they removed the ability to exclude 32-bit plugins. I assume they were getting support requests asking if users needed to install them or not.

For Melda installs, I just set my the folder for 32 bit plugins to my Windows temp folder.  Then I have a script that runs in the evening that clears out the temp folder.

32bit plugins are banned from my PC

[user4325874]

13 hours ago, mettelus said:

This was why Melda said they removed the ability to exclude 32-bit plugins. I assume they were getting support requests asking if users needed to install them or not.

Melda's line of thought doesn't seem too unreasonable since the disk space the 32-bit plugins inhabit is extremely small, 4MB for 41 vst's in my folder.

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, mettelus said:

This was why Melda said they removed the ability to exclude 32-bit plugins. I assume they were getting support requests asking if users needed to install them or not.

I didn't mean to imply that I endorsed or even excused the practice, only meant to share my possible explanation. I think it's lame, too. ?

I have great respect for Vojtech as a programmer and algorithm designer. His system of sharing code among the plug-ins is an amazing feat of software engineering/project management. The marketing hook of the Free Bundle is pretty genius as well.

Where Meldaproduction falls short is in documentation, which is a real bummer, because the stuff has so much depth it could benefit from it. But if you go to the website there is no FAQ or anything similar, no quick links to basic installation guides, not much of the usual "click here if you're new and having trouble or just need information" linkage one usually sees. He likes to describe his processors as the best, most advanced, powerful, incredibly unique like nothing you've ever seen or heard before widgets on the market, but then seems to expect the user to already know how to access this powerful uniqueness. I mean, I don't disagree, I've given him more of my money than any other vendor, but if the world has never seen the like of the thing I'm buying, I'll need some instructions. Tell me how to get started with making it do the amazing.

For a lot of the plug-ins, especially the Free Bundle ones, it seems that he followed the same philosophy of reusing his work, but this time to the detriment of the product. For instance MEQualizer and MCompressor are really quite powerful, but their 60-odd pages of documentation have no table of contents or index,  start out describing the generic features of preset saving and loading, then half a dozen pages down get around to giving a few terse paragraphs to describing the features of the equalizer (and compressor) features, then the rest goes on about the style system, the analyzer, mid-side mode, all the other features that they share with the rest of the plug-ins.

Maybe not so much lame as frustrating. It's like I found an alien artifact that looks like it can do all kinds of neat things, but I can only get it to do 30% of them. Still worth it.

[user4325874]

15 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

 

Where Meldaproduction falls short is in documentation, which is a real bummer, because the stuff has so much depth it could benefit from it. But if you go to the website there is no FAQ or anything similar, no quick links to basic installation guides, not much of the usual "click here if you're new and having trouble or just need information" linkage one usually sees. He likes to describe his processors as the best, most advanced, powerful, incredibly unique like nothing you've ever seen or heard before widgets on the market, but then seems to expect the user to already know how to access this powerful uniqueness. I mean, I don't disagree, I've given him more of my money than any other vendor, but if the world has never seen the like of the thing I'm buying, I'll need some instructions. Tell me how to get started with making it do the amazing.

For a lot of the plug-ins, especially the Free Bundle ones, it seems that he followed the same philosophy of reusing his work, but this time to the detriment of the product. For instance MEQualizer and MCompressor are really quite powerful, but their 60-odd pages of documentation have no table of contents or index,  start out describing the generic features of preset saving and loading, then half a dozen pages down get around to giving a few terse paragraphs to describing the features of the equalizer (and compressor) features, then the rest goes on about the style system, the analyzer, mid-side mode, all the other features that they share with the rest of the plug-ins.

 

I agree that Melda's text documentation isn't an easy read, but there are a lot of of detailed video tutorials on Melda's website:  https://www.meldaproduction.com/tutorials

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by user4325874

[mibby]

4 hours ago, Promidi said:

For Melda installs, I just set my the folder for 32 bit plugins to my Windows temp folder.  Then I have a script that runs in the evening that clears out the temp folder.

32bit plugins are banned from my PC

This is a good idea. However, what if you simply made your script just clean out the default 32 bit plugin folders?  Then you wouldn't have to worry about telling specific installers to dump them into your "temp" folder?

Edited December 8, 2019 by mibby