Melda Plugins
2024-11-30
I've used a small selection of the Melda plugins for years, mostly from the Free Pack and their excellent multiband convolution plugin, but it wasn't until this Black Friday (month!) that I spent some time learning some of the Melda suites more advanced features. I'm glad I did because they've blown my mind a little bit.
These plugins have a reputation as being enormously powerful but with many features hidden behind the UI. Spending a few weeks with the demo of MXXX, their modular plugin that contains all of their other plugins, I got to understand the reasoning behind the UI - you can do some incredibly powerful processing that I haven't come across elsewhere.
Here's a little break down on some of the cool features which I think either get passed over on first look or have hidden qualities to them which are important:
Modular Within Modular
The MXXX modular system, which isn't cheap (unless on sale and even then it's a fair wedge) contains all of their plugins including their modular sound generation system MSoundFactory. One of the joys here is that you can create recursive modular structures, so patches within patches ad infinitum.
Feedback
Unlike some other modular systems on the market, MXXX can do feedback routing. This opens the door to building complex delay and reverb structures with additional plugins nestled in the feedback chains. Deep waters.
Signal Splitting
The multiband plugins are deceptive in that by default they offer standard frequency splitting. However, digging a little deeper reveals the ability to split signals by other properties such as width, stereo position, loudness and transients. So for example you could EQ only the transients, or compress one sound that's appearing at a certain position in the stereo field, or perhaps you want to distort only they quiet parts or send the sides through a formant filter and delay and the middle through a harmonizer or... or... I mean... it's crazy!
Multiparameters
One of the the Melda suites most opaque features are the multiparameters. These are master paramaters that can be routed to control any number of other parameters in a plugin. Using the 'learn' feature you can very quickly set-up control of a bunch of parameters from a single location. Multiparameters can also be set as switches, triggers or banks (effectively lists). Combined with the built-in 'speed' control that will ease between values you can create smooth transitions with a single button. It's not as immediately intuitively as the 'macro' approach that many plugins use but it's got hidden depths.
Custom Interfaces
The second aspect of setting up multi-parameters is that in some of the Melda plugin range you can crate 'active presets'. These are effectively custom front panels which display your multiparameters. This is the basis of some of Melda's slightly unflattering pictorial graphical interfaces. However, creating your own interface for plugins has a simple default GUI which is perfectly usable or you can use the built-in GUI designer which looks to be pretty fully featured. In the example of MXXX or MSoundFactory this is a means to create very complex multi-effect patches or sounds and then provide access to whichever controls you like to appear on the front panel (whilst still granting access to the deep controls via the 'edit' button).
Everything Modulatable (at audio rate!)
As far as I can tell, pretty much EVERY parameter can be modulated by envelopes, LFO's, audio followers, random modulation and finally input pitch tracking. This is all done at audio rate so there isn't additional aliasing noise introduced.
Oversampling Everywhere
Each instance of a plugin has oversampling options. In MXXX this means I can turn on oversampling just on the FX which I think benefit from it e.g. saturation. Incidentally, turning on oversampling for the EQ's fixes the cramping behaviour that they seem to have.
Something to be aware of is that the default limiter settings introduce distortion. This is easily fixed by increasing the peak hold time to 1ms or above.
Pop-Out Windows
In the case of their modular plugins, a shift-click on a module will pop its editing GUI out into its own window. This means you can edit a bunch of parameters at once across multiple plugins in your modular network. It also saves window positions for next time you open the plugin. People complain about the UI but when you know some of these tricks it really comes into its own.
Built-in Help System
Pretty much every window and panel has a '?' button that will provide some contextual help, telling you want all the controls and features in that window do. In many cases this is preferable to video guides (although I would still recommend some of the youtube videos to see just how powerful some of the features are).
Customisable UI
As mentioned, the UI gets flack from some quarters, but it's incredibly customisable and 3rd party themes exist online. My advice is to use the Argon theme with your own choice of 'highlight' colour and 'Upper-case' turned off to make the text a little easier on the eye.
Offline Batch Rendering
Every Melda plugin includes the ability to process files on your computer through them. This includes batch rendering so you can run a whole folder of sounds through your plugin. This is potentially quite niche but I can see some creative uses for this or even mundane ones such as compressing or limiting a group of sounds. Importantly, doing this leaves all of the bwf metadata unscathed which is more than can be said for some audio editors (I haven't tested iXML). With MXXX this feature means being able to process sounds through entire modular fx chains. In the case of the free loudness analyzer plugin this this offline rendering mode offers a means to process files to a target loudness.
Wait, what?! I've just seen that there's also an 'IR' button that can generate an impulse response from a plugin. Amazing feature.
Conclusion
As you can tell, I'm pretty smitten with the potential of these plugins. Even on sale MXXX is probably the most I've ever spent on a plugin purchase (NI Komplete back in the day notwithstanding). I wish I'd discoverd it a few Black Friday's ago as it would have saved me considerable money on the effects I've since bought that I don't think I'll be reaching for in future. I'm finding myself excited by the new-found creative paths to be wondered down.
It's been nice seeing the audio community adopting Bluesky in recent weeks. You can find me there.