Melda on the bench

[aquataur]

This is the successor to an earlier, quite enthusiastic review about Melda’s products. Let´s see how good they hold up to those advance laurels.

Several months have elapsed, since I bought MTC (MTurboComp), looking for the perfect *versatile* compressor. In a way I found it, but not quite due to some practical shortcomings, but this would bust the envelope here.

Melda’s most outstanding feature is their multi-parameter (MP) language. This is a method for constructing your own devices with the core modules your unit provides, which would be envelope processors, filters, modulators, harmonics generators and similar in the case of MTC. Other units come with a lesser or bigger package of those.

This feature is what distinguishes Melda’s units by far from their competitors. Unfortunately it appears incorporated very sloppy and hastingly, and some of their MPs’ visualizations don’t work as expected, have unexpected side-effects, or plain simply don’t work at all. This makes it impossible to successfully create a device.

I cross-checked with an evaluation version of Reaper, which is officially supported by them, to avoid all discussions going into that directions. It is easier to get quickly rid of a customer if the DAW is not officially supported.

I sent them a big document, in-depth structured, that would help to pin-point the problem, bundled with a reference device. If somebody had genuinely looked into that, there would be no excuse to not see the problems.

After days, sometimes weeks, a very friendly customer support comes back and promises that they will look into it, but even after a major revision release (16.11) those things have not changed. In fact I receive the impression, they have not even be tackled.

I believe that not very many people use the MP feature, so fixing it is on low priority in the lights of continuously dishing out new units, which makes me believe that nothing will improve. It also looks as if they had limited personnel and that those few are busy inventing new stuff.

They have a web presence on KVRaudio, but I have not noticed any staff member chiming in on severe complaints like that. There you find a few lonely users that share your problem for consolation, but no one knowledgeable. So this forum cannot be taken for serious.

Another problem that persists is their version of emulations of iconic compressors. Interestingly, nobody seems to complain about the quality of those, or how good they are in emulating, but many complain in unison about missing some very basic practical functions.

Like there is no official information about which those icons are. They take the standpoint that they indeed used icons as a starting point, but later strayed from those by making them better (whatever this “better” may mean), while on the same time making some unmistakable references to those icons by means of naming conventions.

You therefore end up with a handful of potentially powerful specialized (character) compressors that are neither fish nor meat, with no information about them – similar to the icons but deemed better. There is no information about those units, and the manuals from hardware icons won’t work either.

Again, there seems no desire to improve this situation except the mantra “use your ears”, which starts to create nausea in me, being the practical kill-all excuse for further confrontation.

Their claimed feature of being able to cycle through the models for comparison won’t work by a mile, because there are some huge level inconsistencies besides natural incompatibilities between, say a FET timing stack and an opto timing stack. I must say that their EZ screen front plate idea could have been a huge step towards meeting this goal, but it is ridden with problems and inconsistencies that have not been thought to an end. In fact this “feature” can easily turn into a bug because they have made some over-simplifications that are not documented.
Akin to writing a manual “tank-driving for noobs”.

Scrutinizing those models in pursuit of a deeper understanding, alongside with manuals for hardware icons from the internet, I found a lot of unexplainable behavior, which I believe will not be part of the original design. Yet they claim so.

A question that remains yet to be answered is how they managed to squeeze a feed-back design (which most of the units they have there are…) into a feed-forward architecture, because on such a unit you cannot reach huge attenuation ratios despite what the knob setting suggests by design.
The suitable mantra is “machine learned…”

You can theoretically knit your own design or amend existing designs and then upload them to the community, but, as above, none of that is of any use without meaningful documentation. Indeed, you are well advised not to use any undocumented public preset without extensive testing purely from that standpoint.

You cannot enter help files, the uploading mechanism’s help is of little use and no assistance was received from the forum or even a direct request to customer support.

Program help is nicely done, but rigid and very often ambiguous. Some terms have been chosen unwisely and obviously by somebody, whose native language is not English. Again, no additional information is available and suggestions were ignored. The videos help only to an extent. I have offered assistance but with no response.

This all could be a shining gem if it were not treated so step-motherly. I get the impression that their customer support does not know what to do with me. None of the subjects I brought up are unearthly. The few informations that can be found involve extensive detective work.

Make your own decision.

[Mark Bliss]

Agreed.
I experimented with several. Some interesting.
My finding was that many are for those who like fiddling and tweaking. I don't.
And I am glad to learn that I am not the only one who couldn't get anything out of the "advanced" feature set. I thought it was just me being old and thick headed.

I want familiar and functional. Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck. Must be a duck.
And simple is good.

I would say for me, it's similar to experimenting with synthesizer emulations. I can twiddle around for hours and not make anything musical happen.
Some people are into that. Some are very good at it and productive.

I tend to prefer a move to what works for me.

[ppayne]

I believe that not very many people use the MP feature, so fixing it is on low priority in the lights of continuously dishing out new units, which makes me believe that nothing will improve. It also looks as if they had limited personnel and that those few are busy inventing new stuff.

I think that's the key point you've found. A manufacturer could also simply realize that this feature is not used by many users because it simply does not work stable at all. This is where so many manufacturers stumble. They have an idea for a usp but it never gets anywhere and as an explanation they think no one wants it. It's actually a shame that manufacturers themselves often don't recognize this and try to stay on the market with new features. Most developers ignore it until the product is simply unnecessary and no longer has a working usp.

The other trap is that manufacturers rest on a usp but never get the basic functionality ready and stable. What good is a flying vacuum cleaner if the cable is too short

In desperation due to the lack of self-knowledge, the manufacturers then try to outsource support and the creation of documentation to India in order to save costs. This means that the quality drops down there too often.

Nowadays I choose my products based on the quality of the manufacturers' overall performance. This applies from the washing machine to the plugin. Good support, good developers with vision and good marketing so that the product stays on the market, etc. A good idea is the easiest part of a successful product.

If a manufacturer isn't interested in any of this, then what they will end up with is what you describe.

I now can then save myself this experience with these plugins. Thanks for this assessment.

Patrick

[aquataur]

They have an idea for a usp but it never gets anywhere and as an explanation they think no one wants it.

A typical example for this is their MModernCompressor.

This has a totally unique approach by ignoring thresholds and levels as they are used the traditional way and specifying a dynamic range instead.
This may well be the bees knees and a radical revolution, but nobody understands. And then they let slip the word that they don´t develop this any longer because nobody is interested.

They have a video that does not make you much wiser. I have seen quite a few compressors but not any of that style. There is no showcase examples and no description that would encompass the designer´s view, just suck it and see.

It is no mircacle that this is not well accepted.

Their MTurbocomp (and all other simliar units btw.) are very educational, if you look under the hood. This is undeniable. Like they have all sorts of custom shapes for attack and release and such. Unfortunately, the help information for this is useless and it seems impossible to retrieve more information via the forum.

Their MCompressor, the (free) most basic compressor, is a very versatile unit and by far the most useful of the class I found. It has a feature for creating custom shapes for the transfer curve, so with a few clicks you can create an expander, a gate and things that have no comparison.

MTurboComp for example, cannot do this. Some others have a little more of this or of that, which is no problem with the bag of goodies they sit on.
All of their units have the same lego bricks under the hood, but seemingly you are wanted to buy all of them.
Of course you can try them without restrictions for a limited period of time, but this won´t help you if you don´t have a vision for its application like in the case of MModernComp. You very likely would not know how and when to use this.
They probably would be far better off, as you said Patrick, to polish all they have already.

The problem with barely functioning multi-parameters is that it perpetuates through all of the modules. It´s a shame and a pity that they don´t get this sorted out.

@Mark: fiddling for me actually has a limit. I don´t want to loose my goal over fiddling, but this thing is complex. It is not only one compressor, it is many radically different ones. Trying to understand what the controls do, and sometimes trying to understand why they don´t do what is expected, lets me dig deeper. And this was necessary unfortunately. This thing is a multi-functional weapon with the potential of destroying your tone, and I want to be in control, not the other way around.