Meller was born in the former Czechoslovakia and received violin lessons at an early age. He graduated from high school in Košice, Slovakia and studied electrical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. After the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Meller was a refugee in Austria and Italy before emigrating to the United States. In December 1969 he obtained an entry-level job at CBS Records in New York, and later received training in audio mastering. He worked with Sony/CBS for 38 years, and then joined Universal Mastering Studios in 2007 as senior mastering engineer. He later spent a short time at Masterdisk, then relocated to Charleston, South Carolina where he opened his own facility, Vlado Meller Mastering, in 2014.