Agreed, on piano roll and composing. The new live/ performance feature looks good. I'm looking at(in about two years or so) going live and I'd love to stay with FLS. But from what I've seen, ableton seems to be flawless for live work..hmm.

oh yeah, pianoroll is definitely the best in the daw world. ive found none better.

exporting parts is a nightmare.

Oh my sweet sweet fruity loops, how I long for thee.

I'm afraid I'm in the same boat as others in this thread. I have wet dreams about the piano roll so many nights, but damned If I can keep one project from becoming a nightmare.

They just added group tracks, which means theoretically, if you take the time to color all the tracks, generators, and mixer tracks, and then group your tracks together in the playlist, you could have a pretty organized project. However in other DAWs, you don't have to do anything like this, it just happens, everything is right there together and the same color.

Most of the time, the speed I enjoy on the front end of FLS, is lost on down the line, and the production process devolves into "why does this knob keep turnin to this value here? oh there's an extra automation clip.. wtf its still doing it? OH SHIT an initialized value!!! wait a second what he'll is this automation clip doing anyways?? Oh sytrus filter cutoff... wait wait. BUT WHICH SYTRUS??? f**k THIS SONG"

exactly

On the bright side, guys, at least you aren't married to Ableton and constantly fighting with her because she refuses to do automation recording in session view.

-"Baby, I love how you group things, but I don't see what the hangup is about grouping group tracks."
-"It's never enough for you! I'm trying SO HARD to make you happy."
-"I just wanna keep improving the projects we have toget--"
-"I'LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH... MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST GO CALL YOUR LITTLE WHORE BITWIG. OH WAIT, SHE'S STILL IN BETA. YOU LOVED ME WHEN I WAS IN BETA, TOO."
-"B-baby..."

Really? It's too easy for me. Solo - Render - Done.

FL as a composition tool is an unrivaled toy, my fav plaything. Not the best mix down beast, but nothing is perfect. The piano roll is so good everything else is forgiven. And since it can run as a VST, it can play along with others in beautiful harmony - like ebony and ivory...oh wait maybe not such a great metaphorical compositional tool after all.

I like it because it's different. Groups are brilliant, the new live composition and performance mode is mind blowing. It has its issues, yes; but it's also better at what it does well than anything else.
Normally I don't feel any desire to quibble with discussions like these, but... I mean, does everything have to be the same? I use FL when I'm making my own music, and Reaper when I am collaborating. I don't ever feel the need to have them merge. I still prefer FL for its speed and intuitive workflow (for me). Nothing else I've worked with since the Atari days has felt so much like an instrument. Everything else feels just a little bit like work to me.

So just load it up as a VSTi or Re(a)wire it or something. Enjoy the fact that at least one of the DAW softwares is not slowly evolving into everything else.

(not counting MuLab, or the trackers, so nerds calm down. )

(...kidding, I think MuLab is almost as excellent as Muzys 3, and Renoise is astonishing.)

I hear what you're saying z3r0. I do love so many things about the application. I jus think that as my workflow has matured, it becomes harder to have a big picture approach with FL studio.

I've been trying out presonus studio one, and it has that same "instrument" feel, but it's much more straight forward, and I don't get overwhelmed with options as much. I don't have to decide which method of automation to use, where to put it in the playlist, I don't have to fumble with weird mixing organizing and routing, I don't run out of RAM, and most of all the project is always at least somewhat organized.

And really the piano roll is becoming my second favorite to FLS pretty quickly. It's so close to being there. its kind of funny when I think about how the piano roll is really the only thing that makes me consider staying. That and the friggin Ctrl+right click zoom tool (brilliant). If presonus where to add instruments and effect racks the way they are in ableton, I think I would never look back. in general I have a lot more hope for how presonus is going to handle growth of the program than image-line will.

jeez I gotta to to sleep what am I doing

Could you describe what makes the pianoroll so good please? I have yet to find one that im 100% happy with (been using reaper, energyXT, reason and maschine).
The biggest bothers are the need for doubleclick to enter a note(!!!!) and multiple tools. Sometimes i think the GUI could use more shades and colour to different different octaves etc .. just to make it easier for the eyes to see where you are.

FL Piano roll is the best because...

Left click - Draw a note
Right click - Delete a note
CTRL+Drag - Select stuff
SHIFT+Drag - Duplicate your crap
ALT+Scroll - Velocity adjust
ALT+ ◄ or ► - Fine positioning (move 1 thick)
SHIFT+ ▲ or ▼ - Semitone transpose
CTRL+ ▲ or ▼ - Octave transpose
And there's quantize, and flam, and strum, and chop...

FL Piano roll = less clicks!!! ☺

In fairness, FLStudio seems to suffer from the same subjective "flaws" being applied universally in the DAW world, that some people want them all to be everything for everyone.

It's an electronic production tool and it's (imo) very good at that. If you try to force it into being Pro Tools for tracking and editing and mixing, you'll likely be disappointed... and vice versa if you try to force PT into an electronic tool like FL.

We kinda just want it all don't we?

Bitwig Studio will solve all your problems. The DAW to end all daws... except (inevitable) where it won't ("meow"...).

well said, I think.