Mellotronists

Mike, I'm glad that you've made this post.  Since I've joined the board, 
there hasn't seemed to be much room for discussing the pros and cons of 
the M-tron.  I fall into the category of those that would love to own a 
'tron but currently can't afford one, what with Bush's economic miracle 
and two boys bound for college, so I've had to content myself with the 
M-tron.
I'm running on a pretty fast PC that I set up for animation and graphics 
usage, so there's not been any real concession to audio output on this 
machine.  I'm using  ASIO4ALL v2 as my audio driver and an EMU Xboard49 
midi controller on which I've reassigned the pitch bend function to the 
modulation wheel so you don't get an automatic return to zero when you 
take your hand off of it.  To be honest, I don't think that M-tron will 
work with the standard midi pitch bender due to some odd decision made 
by the M-tron software folks.  While on this subject, I haven't been 
able to find a midi channel that controls tape sound changes within the 
software - something that should be quite easy to accomplish from the 
keyboard.  I'd have to say that Gmedia's midi assignments for M-tron are 
questionable at best.

I have never played a 'tron, so I had nothing to compare to when I 
started with the M-tron, and I was generally overjoyed to hear those 
familiar sounds coming from a keyboard I was playing.  It soon became 
apparent (within fifteen minutes or so) that there was something not 
quite right about the sound I was getting.  A lot of the tape settings 
were extremely noisy, some having a rumble on certain keys that was 
quite audible, and the popping that you've described in the Flutes ( 
which was present in many of the sounds)  was very irritating.  I 
believe that the popping is symptomatic of the settings of the audio 
driver, as I've been able to dial most (if not all) of it out by setting 
my buffer size to 1400+ samples - maybe others here have experience with 
this.  The noise in the tapes must be either bad tapes or poorly 
maintained units.  I can't see how any musician/producer/engineer would 
have found this level of noise to be acceptable for studio recordings 
and it doesn't seem to be something that could really be eq'd out of the 
mix.  The tuning on the flute does seem rather suspect - I've tried a 
rather simple task like learning the 'tron part for Strawberry fields 
and it seems that I'm constantly having to readjust the pitch while 
playing (or maybe I'm just getting the notes wrong).

The choirs are not the strong presence that one would expect - overall 
they seem quite muddy and I can't imagine a very good use for them at 
this point.  One of the MK II rhythm sounds has a note (down somewhere 
around b) that plays backwards giving you that "revolver" feel.  
Regarding the String Section, I've noticed that the start time of the 
Cellos gets further out front the farther you go up the keyboard - so I 
simply avoid this setting altogether - it's useless.

I wish the quality of the M-tron samples were better, but for someone in 
my current situation with no professional justification for the cost of 
the real thing (and no way to swing it even if the justification was 
there),  I'll have to continue to make do with M-tron for now (and be 
glad that I've got it).

john barrick

PS - there aren't by any chance plans for a Streetly charity ward?