The Manetron 4+

As someone who uses AUM for live keys, I was excited to find a Mellotron app with AUV3 support. However, there’s a very odd bug. In my setup, I load a unique session for each song, but every time I switch to a different session with Manetron in it, the volume of the app drops significantly. Not the volume knob in the app, but the actual total volume produced by the app. The only way to reset it back to its full volume is to completely close AUM and relaunch it, which is not something I want to have to do between every song in our set. So if you have a similar setup to mine, this may not be the app for you.

However, regarding the actual sounds, they’re pretty good. Some of them are a little darker and more mid-heavy than their equivalent sounds in the Omenie apps, which is something to keep in mind if that’s what you’re use to, but they’re still good quality and very usable. I would feel comfortable switching to this as my main Mellotron app if it weren’t for the AUM bug.

This is a newer version of the original Manetron app (one of my all-time favorite apps) and is marvelous! It doesn’t have the extensive mellotron library of sounds that other apps have, but it is without a doubt the best sounding one I’ve come across - the samples were taken directly from an original mellotron instrument and were untouched (even going so far as to having the original 8-second sample limitation). When using this as an AU plug-in with GarageBand, you can even emulate the characteristic “pop” sound of the original instrument when hitting a key! Simply stunning, this is an amazing app for anyone who wants to add authentic mellotron sounds to their music. I wish I could rate it more than five stars.

This has vibe. So, what it’s 5 dollars for auv3 and, if you look closely, it seems like it’s sampled from a different serial number mellotron from the original app. The new attack mode in the latest update made it even better. No other tron app sounds quite like this.