GMEDIA M-Tron VST 2 PC

making music for about ten years. 7 on pc..

not sure the num

i use it with fl studio.

i use it to get into the feel of the 70's italian movie scorest sound along with some trip hop stuff and others etc.

what? my pc? none of your damn business.

ok, ok, im not listing any of this these questions are total bullshit!

so, heres the deal, ive been making music on pc for about 7 years, before that i was all hardware and mainly analog. as all synth purests are. yeah and fuck the dx7, when i pay a grand for something and all it does is sound like the senfield them or the theme to law and order you better believe somethings getting fucking destroyed. in my teens i was into nine inch nails alot, i remember always seeing him destroy some keyboard every show id seen. it looked like a dx7, if i had the money id take up a hobby of buying those shitcans just to destroy them too. yeah its harder to handle analog but digital never got good. all the digital stuff out there worth a damn has analog parts in it somewhere or close ex/juno 106 and after getting a mc303 when they first came out i realised that the hardware market was fucked and didnt want to waste another damn dime on it. i use fl and have used it from day one cause i felt it was closer to the set up of using a drum machine for sequencing as i did at the time and found it easier to get my physical playing across better instead of fucking programming for 2 hours to get a weak ass bassline that it turns out i didnt like anyways. plus with software you can demo it and if it blows just dont get it. cant say the same for the hardware. ahh anyways.

the interface is totally forward, no bullshit fx, no mellotron with fucking arps cause they didnt have them. just straight forward mellotron, and whoever designed it was a keyboard lover and you can tell. the thing visually is about as appealing as the real thing, even looks aged. smoke stains and a ring from a beer or whatever. if you cant use this then you need to stop playing and just fucking quit cause it doesnt get much easier.

if you cant get a good sound then why did you buy it? this is mellowtron. its exactly like the original. all the sounds and the best part well i thought was the best if you listen closely some keys sound different then others. yes, this is the error that people spent the price of a car on in the day and now. but these things are what make these sorts of intstruments so hard to copy. to error is human. without error theres no human feeling.

sound great in a mix. you can have it right up front and totally still feel confident with it being there. this is most likely hands down the closest you will come to the real thing or should come. having the real thing requires letting a tech more or less live in your home with you. very expressive. well not expressive which is what makes it dead on. niether was the real one you either play well or fucking forget it. the mellotron is very unforgiving. not much room for weak playing skills.

worth it. considering you might buy a brand new car for the money youll spend in the end on the real thing. lets be honest, nobody even considering buying this is going to be able to afford the real thing. restoring one costs more then they cost themselvs and that itself is alot. on one downside its almost unforgiving in how close it is to the real thing. the key loops end and sometimes that can be a bit annoying, and its not the smoothest thing to play on. but with that said its even got some of the bad quirks of the real thing. do your research see if its even what your looking for. theres a free mellotron out there called mellowsound. try that first

Doing my thing for about 35 yrs. Built my own customized DAW using Sonar 3, Win XP home.

It doesn't get any easier. The drivers needed to be updated but that was as easy as downloading for the M-Audio website. The people that said they had problems installing must be retarded or something. It's not a complicated piece of software.

Aaah, the Tron! I love Gmedia products, they are extermely realistic in their replication of vintage gear. If you need a Mellotron sound in your mix, this is it! I can't believe a Triton can come remotely close to replicating it's sounds (they even have the actual "Watcher in The Skys" bass accordian/strings split). There really is not much to tweek (attack/release and pitch). Hey it's a Mellotron.

If you need a Tron sound it simply doesn't get any better or cheaper than the M-Tron. I never thought it would be one of my favorite plug-ins (to include Reaktor4, Absynth, B4, Battery3, oddity, imposcar, minimonsta, etc...) Just add some chorus & reverb and you have instant Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, whatever. I like how the GUI has coffee stains and cigerette burns on it. Gives it that thrashed studio look. If you need Tron sounds, do yourself a favor and get it and enjoy!

I have been making music as a hobby on-and-off for about the last 25 years or so. I've collected and sold various hardware synths over the years (Polysix, DX-7, TX-7, Memorymoog, M1, Wavestation, Triton, S90, Matrix1000 and various others). I have also acquired many synth plug-ins (Modular Moog, Minimoog, digital editions of M1 and Wavestation, B4, FM-7 and the remaining plug-ins of NI Komplete 3 among others). I am convinced that the future is in plug-ins because they are generally cheaper, easier to carry around and setup than their hardware counterparts (10 years ago I would NEVER have believed I could carry a Modular Moog, Hammond B-3 and Minimoog in a tiny laptop... LOL). My plug-ins are installed in both a PC desktop and PC laptop, so I still have to deal with the quirks of Windows XP (grrrrrr). However, as PC hardware becomes faster and software/Windows operating system becomes more reliable, plug-ins will continue to grow and flourish into the foreseeable future. Current software synth plug-ins are feature-rich and sometimes have steep learning curves, but truly worth the effort. I enjoy prog rock, classic rock and blues... basically I like anything but rap and opera (can't handle screaming divas).

For purposes of this review, I installed M-Tron on my Toshiba A75 laptop (3Ghz CPU speed and 1Gb RAM) with an EMU 1616 soundcard system.

Since the M-Tron is so primitive, the interface (keyboard, controls, effects) were very intuitive and easy and not nearly as dense and complex as other soft synths.

Installation? Sadly, I'm going to slam them here. Installing the software was very straightforward and easy, but getting the damn thing to work was the BIG problem here. I installed it as a stand-alone synth for purposes of evaluating it. Most synth plug-ins will allow you to select your audio driver, MIDI controller and allow you to pick yor desired parameters. When I tried to setup my M-Tron configuration, it automatically defaulted to the Emu ASIO audio driver and wouldn't allow me to switch to Direct Sound (which I was using breifly at the time). In fact, it didn't even 'see' Direct Sound (did not appear as a driver option in the drop-down config menu). Now, I know ASIO is generally superior to Direct Sound, but I should be allowed to choose which driver I want to use. M-Tron installation basically does a 'use what I give you' configuration approach. Same thing with the MIDI setup - you can't choose your MIDI options in stand-alone. You just accept what M-Tron gives you. Maybe GFORCE is trying to make the installation competely idiot-proof, but I think M-Tron should be MUCH more flexible in configuration. I think they should use the same configuring approach that Native Instruments does: allow the user to setup ALL the parameters anyway he/she wants.

The worst part is still to come: if you open the config menu (just open it and not change anything), you will get a warning message that says (I'm paraphrasing as I don't remember it exactly) 'Restart M-Tron for your changes to take effect'. What it DOESN'T warn you/tell you is that you've effectively shutdown M-Tron by examining the configuration and it won't work until you actually reboot the application!! I spent wasted hours trying to figure out why the damn thing wouldn't work; my simple inquiry into the configuration shut it down!!!! Totally unacceptable! And the manual doesn't warn you of any of this either. Speaking of which, the manual is REALLY sparse on details. It gives you just enough info to run the applcation in an annoyingly 'hip' way, but gives you very little information on troubleshooting. Granted, this synth is VERY simplistic and doesn't require a tome of information, but I think they should have disclosed FAR more on the installation, configuration and trouble-shooting quirks of this plug-in.

Having said all that, I will give their customer support VERY high marks. I reported my problems to them and, true to their word, they got back to me next business day with suggestions that ultimately got my M-Tron to work. So my score nets to about a 6 (the crappy config problem gets a 2 and customer support gets a 10).

The sounds seem somewhat authentic, but I have to confess I was disappointed as they seem to fall short of the mark. I was seeking some of my favorite Mellotron sounds that I heard from the 70's (Genesis's 'Watcher of the Skies', Yes's 'Heart of the Sunrise', Beatles 'Strawberry Fields') but M-Tron really didn't quite capture them for me. The soundbanks generally seemed a little flat and one-dimensional and don't carry the presence I was expecting. My Triton has a patch called 'Watcher' that is far superior than anything I could find in M-Tron. My guess is that you'll need some additional FX plug-ins to achieve some of those classic sounds. I believe I'll spending a LOT of time tweeking/sweetening the sounds with plug-in effects before I come close to getting the sounds I want. To their credit, GFORCE gives you a large number of soundbanks, so you may find what you're looking for. But unfortunately, GFORCE doesn't seem to capture that classic Mellotron sound and doesn't succeed with this classic keyboard the way Arturia does (Modular Moog, Minimoog, CS-80), Native Instruments does (B4, Prophet, FM-7) and Korg does (M1, Wavestation).

There are some VERY primitive controls available on M-Tron (tone, attack, release and volume) but I find them lacking. On the other hand, you have to give GFORCE credit in that they stuck with authenticity to the original Mellotron as they made M-Tron as the Mellotron really was. For example, the sounds are not looped, so if you hold the key down for a long time, the sound will eventually stop (like the real Mellotron does when it runs out of tape). I also dislike the 'truncation' of keys (i.e. limited to the original Mellotron keyboard and NOT the 88 keys of my MIDI controller), but you have to give kudos to GFORCE for authenticity here. Personally, I have no problems if they departed from authenticity and added improvements such as additional effects and a wider range of keys (especially the keys!!!). Arturia gave polyphony to the Modular Moog and I think it is a fantastic improvement over the original beast, so I hope GFORCE would consider similar improvements in expanding the key range and adding effects to improve the M-Tron sound.

In my view, this is a good example of 'you get what you pay for'... this synth plug-in is inexpensive, but that's because it falls short of many expectations (at least mine). At $80, it's worth the price but if you are seeking more authentic strings, choirs, etc., then look elsewhere (I prefer the M1 digital edition for these... for now). Maybe my expectations were too high, but am disappointed with this plug-in and not sure if I'll be using it often going forward.

Used with Cubase SX3

Interface is user friendly

Installing was a bit tricky because I had to find an update for the sound library for the plugin to work in Cubase SX3

The controls used to change the tone, sustain, and release make it easy to get a desirable sound.

It sounds incredible to my ears and in a mix!
I have not played a real mellotron but I can say that the M-tron can produce familiar mellotron sounds such as the flute used by Led Zep.
I have used quite a few VST intruments such as Virtual Intruments electric piano and acoustic piano and hated the way they sounded, most likey because I own a real rhodes and and acoutic upright. I am generally very picky, yet I love the M-tron. M-tron is the only VST intrument I have ever liked listening to besides a few open source/freeware vst intruments.

I give a 10 in this category because the M-tron is far cheaper than other VST intruments, and is much better.

Wow, I cannot believe that nobody has reviewed the M-tron. I was looking for a review before I bought it but couldn't find one here, so based on the low price
and some other info, I decided to take the plunge.

A few caveats:

1. I'm really more of a synth hardware kinda guy...this is my first real softsynth (not counting the ones that come with Sonar). I really do prefer front panels
and knobs with my hardware, but as you will read in the review, the mellotron is probably the best candidate for a softsynth version, as there was not a lot of
user control in that instrument to begin with.

2. This thing is pretty authentic, from a features/defects point of view. If you are expecting to play it like any other softsynth, or that it will be good for replacing
any string or choir sounds you should look elsewhere. Like the original Mellotron, this is pretty much a speciality instrument.

3. I have never played a real mellotron...well I laid my hands on some that were broken, but never played one and had sound come out.

If you are reading this and you are a real Melltron owner, cut me some slack...I never used the real thing, BUT I'm a big fan of progressive rock music, which
had tons of Mellotron on it, so I appreciate the instrument for what it is.

I'd love to have a real one, but I'd rather spend the $5200 or so one costs on an analog modular synth...I'm not that much of a mellotron lover.

This thing is really cool for the $79 it costs; if you own a real Melltron, think of this as the "Palm Pilot" version.


Uhhhh, not sure about the software version, but it's one of the later ones, I just got it. G-Media (the company that makes the M-Tron) offers updates, as I
understand it this thing was really buggy when it first came out.

I have it installed as a VSTi plugin running in Sonar 3.0. Sonar 3.0 comes with a VSTi to DXi wrapper standard to run VST's. I had a lot of trouble installing it,
but it could have been pilot error, Sonar, or maybe the M-Tron, who knows? Sonar finally found it after I checked every box in an install dialog.

Patch editing is really easy, there is virtually no editing. Other than calling up a bank of sounds, you can only change the volume, tone, and attack/release (two
separate sliders).

The software is a patch editor for all intents and purposes.

The manual is pretty sparse, it is the casing that the CD-ROM comes in. Still, given the simplicity of the M-Tron, a thick manual is not really needed.

I'm giving it a 9 for ease of use, since I had some problems with the install.

Oh yeah, all the regular pain in the ass things about using softsynths (having to pick an audio track, midi track, midi channels, route the audio to your interface,
set your latency, etc.) applies.

If you are a DAW head then this is probably no big deal, but I like just hitting the on switch on hardware and playing it 30 seconds later.

No keyboard, it's a softsynth (it does have a keyboard in the panel view though, and you can play it).

I'd recommend a good used 49 key synth to trigger this thing....I don't think it would feel right using one of those little plastic controllers.

I'm actually using either a Roland JP-8000 or my Waldorf XT-K to trigger the M-Tron.

OK, you real Melltron owners can go and groan now....

Polyphony is kinda weird, like a Mellotron, it's FULL POLYPHONY, in other words if you laid a 2 x 4 on the keyboard it would play all those notes, BUT like
a real mellotron you only have 35 notes that will sound.

Yep that's right, instead of pitch shifting samples to make it spread across a 61 note keyboard, you get a 35 note segment out of the middle.

This is where the "really authentic part" comes in...some people might think this sucks, but frankly when you hear the sounds you realize that pitch shifting
them would just sound ridiculous.

The other thing that is authentic is that the sounds are sourced from original mellotron tapes, AND THEY ARE NOT LOOPED. So when you hold down a key,
the note sounds for 8 seconds then shuts off until you let up on the key.

At first this sounds like a limitation but think about it.....try holding a single chord for 8 seconds and see how boring it is. In practice the 8 second limit isn't that
big of a deal; and in fact it contributes to the style of playing a real mellotron. If you listen to the old records with mellotron on them, they tend to shift notes
within a chord to get around this...this makes a very cool playing style as you hit chords and diminish them, minor them, whatever, you are always changing the
notes within a phrase which makes things more musical.

What this software does is try to replicate a real Mellotron, if you want to play strings and choir on opposite ends of your 88 note keyboard, then look
elsewhere. If you want to hold down a pad and have it last for 30 minutes, then get a synth or softsampler.

You get 35 notes, they play for up to 8 seconds, that's the deal here.

One interesting "defect" is that I found if you hit all the notes in a chord at once, they usually don't end at the same time. I don't know for sure but I expect a real
mellotron is probably like this.

Hey it will play 10 finger chords though, if that floats your boat.

No built in effects, but given how syrupy and thick this thing sounds, effects would just glop it up. A little light reverb is cool on some things, but often it
sounds better to just lengthen the release time a bit.

The expansion capability is the ability to load additional tape banks.

I believe they are up to four volumes now, these are digital copies of the original tapes. Once you install a bank on your computer, it's real easy to load up an
additional bank. When you load an actual sound, it goes into RAM, it is not streamed off the hard disk.

Standard midi stuff applies, it is velocity sensitive, which I believe the original mellotron sort of was, sort of was not. You can set the various controls (tone,
attack, release, volume) to respond to midi cc's, that is pretty cool for automation purposes.

On-Board sequencer? Heh, heh, that's funny a Melltron with a sequencer...Well actually it does, the sequencer is as good or bad as the host program you intall
it in.

It's a little hard to rate the features because there are not a lot of them.

I'm giving it an 8 for a couple of reasons:

1. They went for authenticity here and I appreciate that....no sense in trying to make it into an 88 key melltron that plays endless pads.

2. They did add attack and release, which is pretty handy

Well the sounds are not realistic very much, but then again neither was a real mellotron.

Now I never played

Kind of hard to steal a plugin, but I suppose it would happen.

This thing is well worth the $79 it costs...as I said the perfect plugin because unlike most "vintage synth" plugins this thing costs a lot less than the actual
hardware (like 2% of what a real one costs as opposed to 10% - 20% or so), and requires a lot less owner commitment.

Owning a real Mellotron would be a very scary thing, hard to service, hard to move, hard to sell...it's not like getting
Jupiter 8 or Oberheim OB-8. So this thing gets you 95% of the sound with none of the expense and hassle.

Sure it's not the real thing, nothing would be for the purist, but to add that special "vibe" to a track this thing is invaluable.

As I said I could see this plug being really big with tribute bands.

I've been playing keyboards for a long while, mainly synths, even though I'm actually a bass player. I love old prog rock, hence my interest in the "Mellotron"
sound. Knowing that I'd never buy a real one, the plugin appealed to me a lot.

I think as far as vintage plugins goes, this thing and the CS-80V and Modular Moog from Arturia are the coolest. You can buy a
Prophet 5 or Minimoog pretty easy for not a lot of money, but try finding a Mellotron, Modular Moog, or CS-80...oh yeah then try fitting them in the car and
carrying them home.

As I said the Mellotron is a really good candidate for a plugin...much more so than most vintage keyboards.

Like I said I'm more of a hardware guy, the stuff I have includes:

Roland JV-90 (with VE-JV1 voice expansion and vintage synths expansion), Kawai K5000S (one of the coolest synths ever made, even though it's digital),
Korg DW-8000 with Angel City Turbo Mod, Yamaha CS1-x, Proteus 2000 (with Proteus Pop Composer, Sounds of the ZR-76, B-3 Organ, and Scziedlaczek
Orchestral expansions), TWO Oberheim Matrix 1000 modules (run as one stereo twelve voice unit), an Oberheim OB-8 (with factory midi), Roland JD-800,
Roland JP-8000, Yamaha S-80 Piano/synth (with AN1x and Piano expansion boards), Ensoniq Halo (with ZR-76, B-3, Extreme Lead, and Vintage Keys)
expansion ROMS), and finally a Waldorf Q (16 voice) and a Walforf XT-K (10 voice).

One of the reasons I got the G-Tron is that nothing else in my rig does what it does...sure I've got "Mellotron" sounds in some of my Expansion ROMs, on the
Emu stuff and the Roland JV-90, but they are way too clean and nice compared to the M-Tron. It's a really evocative plugin, very cool indeed.

I love the sound and the fur the sound has on it....I don't hate anything really, I just wish there were an inexpensive hardware version so I didn't have to do all the
wires/routing crap you have to do to play a softsynth.

Oh yeah, you can't plug headphones into it, that kinda sucks <g>

You cannot compare this to anything really, except the real thing...if you are in the market for a real Mellotron, a plugin version will not suffice, but this thing
will get you most of the way there if you don't want to drop $5000+ on the real thing.

I wish there was a way to combine the "best" (IMHO) sounds from the various banks into one super bank...I'll have to ask GMedia if you can make custom
banks from the things you have on disk...might be possible.

I do wish more than one bank came with the package, but at $79 I can't complain too much.

Oh yeah this thing will help me create music, it's got a sound like nothing else, most of the plugins in Sonar kinda suck compared to hardware (sorry but those
lameass synths that come stock with Sonar get crushed like tiny bugs by my Waldorf XT-K), so this thing really adds to the package.

Overall, if you like Mellotrons at all, this plug is a must buy...it's cheap it works well, and it's pretty aut