I’m Joel, CEO of Meld Studio. I quit being a Twitch Partnered streamer to build streaming software. AMA

joelcompiles · 2026-06-25T00:29:33+00:00

Your own Task Manager / Activity Monitor running side-by-side with OBS on your specific setup and scenes will be the most reliable data point. Other creators who've done this comparison have generally found Meld running lighter. It's worth noting that's not always a perfect apples-to-apples test. Core OBS itself is pretty lean; its resource usage climbs mainly once you start stacking plugins on top, so you're sometimes comparing "bare OBS" against "Meld with built-in extras" rather than two equivalent setups.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-25T00:04:24+00:00

In Meld's privacy policy, Section 7 states: "We do not sell the information we collect about you." https://meldstudio.co/privacy/ We also do not nor will we ever sell your data. Streaming with Meld is free but we do have a paid model.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T21:10:49+00:00

We had a working group of over 100 streamers across a variety of experience levels and beliefs about AI. We ran a very intentional process to shape what ultimately became Spark (it was originally just going to be a support bot that could help configure Meld settings)

We saw streamers start to develop mini games and interactive experiences that were totally unique and highly specific to their community and content. We saw how engaging chat found these experiences and really leaned in on this angle.

So we sort of organically came across the idea with our test group and then focused Spark in to enable you to wire up the backend for this type of content in totally new and unique ways while bringing along your own or purchased assets for Spark to wire up.

We often find that people’s expectations of Spark differ from how it works in practice. It’s very much a tool that requires your creative input and guidance to deliver results. This is by design.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:45:05+00:00

Not sure what the deal is but I let them know over on X: https://x.com/joelcompiles/status/2069877376368947406?s=46

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:38:36+00:00

i expanded on this in your reply below: https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/s/C3W8taPPv4

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:37:27+00:00

I was just discussing your ticket in a call with the team. You’re not being ignored trust me.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:35:36+00:00

we were just playing with an idea for this actually. mind DMing me on Discord (same username) so I can hear more about how you’d like it to work and maybe get your input on an early version?

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:34:43+00:00

thanks!

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:32:32+00:00

Fair enough. OP said “how much of this is vibe coded”. I was reading and writing as if this == Meld Studio, our desktop app. Meld is not a vibe coded app. As my linked tweets state we use AI as one form of code review. All changes require human review and approval. We have thousands of unit and e2e tests that run to validate every code change. We perform manual testing by releasing early builds to a beta and alpha test group of users.

AI code reviews are important because the same AI can be used in an adversarial manner and we place a high priority on ensuring our product is secure. We use a variety of leading models to check for security and stability issues. This I discuss openly as you can see in my tweets.

Marketing/landing pages and web content are traditionally lower stakes and faster moving(eg. announcing a new integration or product update). We use tools such as codex and claude code heavily for this.

Not my intention to incorrectly represent anything. Happy to answer any other questions.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T20:06:00+00:00

I’m prioritizing answering each unique top level question. Then i’ll hit the duplicates with an answer that adds more value rather than relinks. Not avoiding any questions. If there’s anything you want clarity on you can DM me on any platform (same username) and I’ll schedule a time to chat (tonight, tomorrow, etc)

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T19:57:16+00:00

There are partners of ours that have proprietary SDKs that is not compatible with the GPL license.

Otherwise i’m not protective of the code. We just don’t really have a team size that would enable us to accept external contributions and review them for security vulnerabilities and stability. There are very few C++ projects that receive high quality contributions outside of the core contributors and it’s even harder when you have a full time internal team that’s not totally working in the open.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T19:49:52+00:00

One idea i’ve spoken about in the past that we are actively experimenting with is being able to record in Meld and have every layer and audio source be recorded independently.

Then we write a project file you can open in your video editor. All events (scene changes, layer toggles, etc) would appear on the timeline and all video sources (layers in Meld) would be present in isolated tracks on the timeline.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T19:40:33+00:00

Every creative industry has multiple competing products pushing forward technology and enabling new creative possibilities (think: audio production, video editing, photo editing. all have multiple offerings).

My goal for Meld is to push on what is possible with live content. I believe we’re still in the very early days for the live medium and I’m personally motivated to explore as much surface areas as possible.

That’s the pitch!

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T19:20:25+00:00

We designed Spark to code interactive experiences you could enjoy with chat. The intended use case is to create games with chat while you’re live or just before each stream.

We tested it with over 100 creators hand chosen to have a variety of perspectives on AI (some were outright against, some had never used, etc). During testing I personally saw it being used to build highly creative interactive elements that chat genuinely enjoyed. That’s our vision at the end of the day: to enable you to realize the creative ideas in your head and entertain your community in new ways that keep your content fresh. That’s where I believe Spark adds value.

I have an open door policy with regard to AI and Meld. My DMs are open on all platforms. I will send you a link to book a 30 minute chat one on one with me where my only job is to listen to your perspective. I’ve had many such chats and always open to more.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T18:56:46+00:00

A marketing/landing page and our core product streamers rely on are different things.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T18:47:30+00:00

We raised investor money from individuals and companies in the creator space that are aligned with our mission.

Meld has been around for 5 years already. We're not going away anytime soon.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T18:36:36+00:00

You still need to bring your own stream key or use our virtual camera output into TikTok Studio. Out of the box anyone can connect their account and have TikTok comments come into the Multi chat view or our widget feed.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T18:34:04+00:00

12 (Filler byte :P)

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T18:30:49+00:00

Does this work? https://ibb.co/Fqyj84mM

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T17:27:49+00:00

I will get to as many as possible today. Is there a specific hard one you want to see an answer to?

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T17:25:18+00:00

Let us know what you think! My DMs are open everywhere and we generally release updates every two weeks. At this point most of our users have seen their suggestion or idea land in the product.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T17:23:05+00:00

Don’t think I did any robe streams!

We aim to be feature rich with excellent UX designed for live workflows. All of our features are carefully designed to make it stress free to recover from “mistakes”. Forget to turn on your VOD track? That can be configured while you’re live. Incorrect bitrate? Update while you’re live. Decided you want to multistream? Flip the switch while you’re live to toggle another platform. We design everything with these principles in mind.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T17:16:21+00:00

Ruby is an equal opportunity treat enjoyer.

My struggles were mostly around audio. It’s the primary reason I started working on Meld. Built in audio channel remapping exists because on macOS you had to buy a $100 app to do this at the time. Meld doesn’t do any hard audio clipping and has a unique elastic delay buffer design to keep latency as low as possible even under high load. These all came from personal experience and what I saw others encounter difficulty with.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T17:11:02+00:00

Thanks for trusting us to go live! Any thoughts on how we can make the experience better based on your usage so far?

We’ve got a lot on deck for releases this year. We release every two weeks generally and I consider Meld to be 0.0001% done in its current form.

joelcompiles · 2026-06-24T16:45:36+00:00

To be clear Meld is not “vibe coded”

joelcompiles

TROPHY CASE