FL Studio 6 Mixer...

[tony tony chopper]

We've had post about PDC and freezing in our forums for years. Yet, there's always someone who won't bother searching, post about it, and claim we don't care if he doesn't get a reply within the following hour. We usually don't reply anymore.

[audiojunkie]

people want a big mixer cos it looks pro ...

Actually the mixer is/can be smaller now :

http://www.flstudio.com/misc/mixer_1208_400.swf

See ya,

jmc (FL Studio)

JMC,

Why do requests such as Freeze and PDC fall upon deaf ears?

--Sean

Er.. the last few posts should have cleared that up, did you read?

Yes. My comment was responding to a message from an earlier page. After I got to the page with Gol's comments, and read them, I edited my message.

I still think that if there are plug-ins that allow latency compensation for programs that need PDC, there should be SOMETHING built in to help us with the latency problems.... Even if it's just a souped up plug-in like Voxengo's sample delay plug-in.

--Sean

[audiojunkie]

We've had post about PDC and freezing in our forums for years. Yet, there's always someone who won't bother searching, post about it, and claim we don't care if he doesn't get a reply within the following hour. We usually don't reply anymore.

Now that I've finally found a way to make 'Freeze' work for me, I don't mind it too much. It seems like it would a t least make sense, however, to add a plug-in like Voxengo's sample delay into FL Studio, so that we can have the ability to use plug-ins that have latency. It's scary that we have to rely on outside programmers for solutions to this. If they leave, or go out of business, this could be a problem for us (getting the software).

What if you included a simple plugin that reported the initial latency, and allowed for automatic compensation based upon this report. We could then simply insert it at will.

--Sean

[tony tony chopper]

there are plug-ins that allow latency compensation for programs that need PDC

there are NOT. You just can't go back in time. There are delay plugins that you can insert in EVERY single track (except the one that causes PDC).

Still, are you ready not to use track routing? Internal controllers? Multiple generators to the same track? Sends? Your plugin won't help here neither.

[jmh]

Just deleted an extensive post mostly explaining what you can't use with FL and how some of Gol's responses still sound funny despite being backed up... ("*I* couldn't care less for convolution plugins so you'd avoid them"... ehh? :O) Not only would it be useless, it's been done to death (didn't we go through this PDC and Freeze thing like a year ago here?), it's not what I *really* want so say...

Instead, here's one suggestion, no idea if you've heard this before (I doubt it though, pretty much everything must have been suggested before):

* Add a channel delay to the generator channels. Make it go positive AND negative. Only utilize it upon playback. *

Now, sounds stupid unless you think about it, doesn't it?

Read on... years ago when PDC was nothing but a glimpse in the eye of whoever coined up the term, Cubase had this little parameter. What it allowed you to do was mindbending You could easily compensate for inherent delays MIDI devices introduced - I used it to great success with a SIDstation and especially with a HardSID Quattro. These babies had a small delay in responding to MIDI stuff, and you could get them to play in sync with everything else just fine during playback by introducing a proper amount of negative delay (which for you folks with greater vocabularies would make it 'advance').

Not only that, it was a great tool for experimenting with timing, especially with anything that had some attack in it - pads were extremely fun to get timed properly with this. Advance them a little, amount depending on how slow the attack is, and they sit in better than being triggered rigidly quantized to the same timings as say the drums and bass.

Of course there are workarounds - the good old "leave one pattern of emptiness in the beginning of your track in the playlist and delay/advance everything by required amount" - but the beauty of providing it as a channel parameter is that it'd be so much easier and faster to use.

One side effect would be that people could utilize plugins that introduce delay by (after understanding how it works!) routing their signals so that simply by advancing the generators themselves the delay introduced by an offending plugin would be compensated. Of course, using it for PDC would mean trusting the user to use his/her brains, admittedly something that seems to be overrated nowadays (judging from a lot of KVR browsing and not limiting this to any single app or platform or anything). It would of course be totally dependant on routing channels and effect channels properly to gain anything from it for a poor man's PDC replacement, taking into account all FL can do. But at least people could utilize some convolution reverb here and there

(coincidentally, just confirmed that Live has this - its channel delay does allow negative amounts... wow)

Kind of what FL already has, that offset/fine time shit thing in channel properties. But going negative as well, and preferably located easier, say in the step sequencer along with vol and pan...

While at it, here's another quick suggestion... now that the mixer got revamped (impressive! and damn fine now), howsabout revamping the channel window so that say by choosing it in Preferences, all 4 tabs of the channel window are shown as one wider window - it'd make working with channel settings a little faster, doesn't need that much tweaking to realize, and provides some useful side effects such as having a wider view of the keyboard in the bottom of the window, making things related to its functionality faster to use once again (less scrolling and so on... might it even fit fully if the window was 4 times as wide?)

Trying to decide which way to go from my current hosts once FL 6 is out - it'll be Live or FL. FL is hands down the winner overall for me already since I've been fiddling with it for ages. But the short sessions I've had with Live have been interesting, it's giving some serious competition in some areas... too bad nothing has as good a pianoroll as FL - and I've tried everything.

Regards,

JMH

[tony tony chopper]

If you're talking about compensating by shifting the automation data itself, it's not possible in FL since every song time is tick-aligned - you can't shift this with a sample-accuracy, far from it.

Btw, I can well understand that an effect needs latency compensation. I can understand that a hardware-based generators needs this as well. But any other generator, no I don't get it, if it does then it's poorly designed. Unless I'm missing something.

[jmh]

Well... that channel shifting idea was more about having one more tool to work with timings, I've really enjoyed it during the years to be able to shift one instruments whole timing in regard to the others. It's a really usable feature for me, something I hope existed in every host.

I'm assuming that how it might be realized is delaying the rest of the channels in regard to the one being advanced - but I think I understood your response... meaning it'd be practically impossible indeed, taking internal controllers etc. into account.

All I was thinking about was getting a quick way to advance an instrument, instead of doing it the old fashioned way in the playlist Not a need from a technical point of view but stricly from a compositional point.

Regards,

JMH

[Buka]

Here's about PDC, freezing, and solo:

-Freezing.
All that's missing is that it won't disable generators and effects for you - you have to do this manually. I know some think that completely removing the plugin from the project (to 'save ram'..) is better - it's not really, but I don't feel like debating about it.
.

why not debate on this...its crucial man...
i dont have problems with manualy disabling effects(couse when u disable them they dont use CPU anymore) but i have a big problem with removing the generator(vsti) from my project to save CPU (couse they use CPU regardless of them being desabled)...this is a stupid way....the clever way is freezing...u freeze the generator(vsti) and u can return it with one click without deleting it and u save the wav with the same click and u can return it when u want it back

[Trancit]

BUT FL offers full track routing, you can route a track to another, and then to another again, while sending to others.

This is a point I don`t understand...

In Cubase SX I can route a track to a groupchannel and then to naother again, while sending to an effectchannel or another groupchannel....and PDC works great...

To compensate the delay manually the lack of FLS is that you can route the sendchannels only to the master...so I`m not able to delay the sendchannel outputs...Is this fixed in the new mixer???

Trancit

[tony tony chopper]

In Cubase SX I can route a track to a groupchannel and then to naother again

does that groupchannel have its own generators routed to it?

[Trancit]

In Cubase SX I can route a track to a groupchannel and then to naother again

does that groupchannel have its own generators routed to it?

Does I have to route generators to groupchannels???
Does FLS`s sendchannels have its own generators routed to them??
I think it`s not impossible to add a sort of groupchannels to the mixer for crossrouting channels if this would make PDC in FLS becomes reality...

And what about routing abilities of the sendchannels in the new mixer??


Trancit

[tony tony chopper]

Does FLS`s sendchannels have its own generators routed to them??

no, but FL generators can access sends and other tracks when they want, not telling FL, and we also have 'hybrid' generators that process voices, meaning there's no real 'generator output' for those.
Yes, when you use the fruity slicer, there is NO mix output for those channels.

[audiojunkie]

there are plug-ins that allow latency compensation for programs that need PDC

there are NOT. You just can't go back in time. There are delay plugins that you can insert in EVERY single track (except the one that causes PDC).

Still, are you ready not to use track routing? Internal controllers? Multiple generators to the same track? Sends? Your plugin won't help here neither.

Gol,

Read at the following URL: http://www.knufinke.de/sir/faq_en.html

The answer for the question, "My Sequencer doesn't compensate latency when using SIR as Send-Effect . How do I use SIR as Send-Effect?" explains exactly how we can do it. As long as we route our signals this way, it shouldn't cause any of the problems you mentioned. A simple plugin could assist us greatly without causing any problems that you are mentioning. In fact, it is currently being done by many of us right now, with no adverse affects. It ALREADY WORKS NOW. It's just that it's uncomfortable to have to rely on another company for the solution.

--Sean

[tony tony chopper]

A simple plugin could assist us greatly without causing any problems that you are mentioning.

you mean, you'd be happy with a delay plugin? I can do that in 5 min

[audiojunkie]

Does FLS`s sendchannels have its own generators routed to them??

no, but FL generators can access sends and other tracks when they want, not telling FL, and we also have 'hybrid' generators that process voices, meaning there's no real 'generator output' for those.
Yes, when you use the fruity slicer, there is NO mix output for those channels.

I don't mean any disrespect, but it sounds like a design oversight to me. PDC CAN be done, it IS useful, but are YOU willing to make it happen? That is the question that people would like to know.

--Sean