FL Studio still the top dog!

[Image-Line]

you almost sound like it's beamz that you're selling..

I am explaining how people start with it & where some of our initial successes came from. Not what keeps them using it.

I don't think the list of features that make FL Studio unique (or had years before the competition) really gets to the point of this discussion.

Regards Scott

[tony tony chopper]

I don't think the list of features that make FL Studio unique (or had years before the competition) really gets to the point of this discussion.

& I think that "lifetime updates" doesn't matter a single bit, considering that the majority of users (of any app) haven't paid for it.
It may matter for the amount of paying users, but not for the amount of users.

I think the most important was 10-15 years ago, at that time you couldn't do shit with Cubase/Cakewalk/others unless you had hardware. There were only a couple of apps (and a ton of trackers, but mostly varying in their # of lanes) in which you could get *sound* on a normal system.

[foosnark]

I make jokes about things but I don't subscribe to the "it's just a toy" crowd. It's a powerful DAW that can do just about anything. I just personally don't really like some aspects of the company, and don't find it intuitive....there are other things I like more

fully agree with this. i can clearly see the substantial capabilities of FL Studio but we just don't click.

That's exactly how I feel about Ableton Live. I can get things done in FL Studio, but Live kind of feels to me like a shotgun wedding between Acid and a Commodore 64 tracker.

I am explaining how people start with it & where some of our initial successes came from. Not what keeps them using it.

It's a fair explanation. I started using it because my brother told me he'd played with it and thought it was cool. I don't know whether he was playing with a demo or a cracked version, and it kind of doesn't matter. His enthusiasm for it got me curious, and I tried the demo, immediately got some results from it, bought the full version (I think it was version 3 at the time) and haven't looked back. For him (a non-musician) it was a fun toy, but for me it's indispensable.

FL's strengths as far as I'm concerned:

-- Fantastic piano roll and parameter automation
-- Good flexible mixer
-- Some decent included instruments and FX
-- Very powerful and customizable browser (I keep organized folders of one preset per instrument/effect that I use, so I can find what I want by going to "Synth/PM/Chromaphone" or "FX/Distortion/Maul" or whatever.)


Weaknesses:
-- Dealing with MIDI controllers is sometimes awkward or broken. I want consistent pitch bend ranges with different plugins. Surely there's some way to deal with this intelligently.

-- Awkwardness when recording audio. What I wind up doing is putting Voxengo Recorder into a mixer channel, record my part, close FL studio (to free up ASIO), open Sound Forge, edit it, reopen FL Studio, and bring the recording in as a clip or sample. (I suppose I should just get to know Edison better; I keep forgetting it exists.)

Wish list:

-- An option to banish the step sequencer entirely and use piano rolls for everything. This is basically how I work, but unused instruments in a pattern show empty step sequencers instead of empty piano rolls. Minor nitpick.

-- A better way to access parameter automation by UI control, instead of trying to find that obscurely named parameter among 800 others in the browser.

-- A "master piano roll" or "instrument combinator" or something like that. Let's say for drums you have Battery, Microtonic, Ultra Analog and Kore but you want to play/program them as if they were a single instrument. There should be some slick, hassle-free way to set this up.

[DarkerDigital]

I think FL is great for composing, way better than most other DAWs.
The piano roll and the step sequencer for drums are awesome. Going through drum samples in the browser and using the step sequencer to build drum patterns is how every DAW should handle drums.

I would never mix, master or work with audio files in FL though. But that is not what it is for, in my eyes. I only use it to compose.

I think though, that every update brings a few little changes that I don't like because it changes things that I am used to. I like the minimalism of FL and new updates shouldn't change things that I am already used to.

[T-CM11]

-- Awkwardness when recording audio. What I wind up doing is putting Voxengo Recorder into a mixer channel, record my part, close FL studio (to free up ASIO), open Sound Forge, edit it, reopen FL Studio, and bring the recording in as a clip or sample. (I suppose I should just get to know Edison better; I keep forgetting it exists.)

Edison is great! I never use a separate audio editor

-- A better way to access parameter automation by UI control, instead of trying to find that obscurely named parameter among 800 others in the browser.

-- A "master piano roll" or "instrument combinator" or something like that. Let's say for drums you have Battery, Microtonic, Ultra Analog and Kore but you want to play/program them as if they were a single instrument. There should be some slick, hassle-free way to set this up.

-- Click browse parameters in the upper left corner. Then click on a knob in the plugin's UI. The parameter is then highlighted in FL's Browser.

-- Patcher not working for you?

[LawrenceF]

It's interesting how different people view the same things.

There is a pretty large group of daw users out there who don't actually "make" any music at all, but record and mix and master the music of others. They all use daws. Their needs and preferences lean very heavily toward things that Live and Bitwig and FL aren't actully designed for and franky, are not very good at, comparitively speaking. But if you mention that, all hell beaks loose.

So like CT implies, it's all a big subjective mess of personal preference and personal need.

I love FLStudio personally. But I would never in a million years choose it as the actual hub / centerpiece of my studio, for tracking and.mixing. It has a context like everything else.

If i had to guess without knowing, I'd suspect that list of songs done in FL were likely mostly mixed in PT. I don't know that for sure though. I do agree about the demos, great demo songs. The best collection of demo songs i've personally ever seen in any daw.

[tooneba]

*pre-production *post-production

[foosnark]

Click browse parameters in the upper left corner. Then click on a knob in the plugin's UI. The parameter is then highlighted in FL's Browser.

Unless I'm mistaken, sometimes this just doesn't work. I'm thinking it was some particularly big synth with hundreds of parameters where it failed -- maybe some Reaktor-based monster, or Alchemy, or something.

Patcher not working for you?

I'll look into it, but it didn't seem quite like what I wanted. (Can I assign, for instance, C3 = C3 on one plugin, D3 = C3 on another plugin, C4-C6 = C3-C5 on a third plugin, etc.?)

[T-CM11]

I'll look into it, but it didn't seem quite like what I wanted. (Can I assign, for instance, C3 = C3 on one plugin, D3 = C3 on another plugin, C4-C6 = C3-C5 on a third plugin, etc.?)

Assign the key range for each plugin, and then load a Layer channel. Select all plugin channels, and do "set children" in the layer channel.

[LawrenceF]

*pre-production *post-production

*electronic music production *acoustic music production

Not quite the same toolset.

[Nokenoku]

-- Awkwardness when recording audio. What I wind up doing is putting Voxengo Recorder into a mixer channel, record my part, close FL studio (to free up ASIO), open Sound Forge, edit it, reopen FL Studio, and bring the recording in as a clip or sample. (I suppose I should just get to know Edison better; I keep forgetting it exists.)

You definetly should!
Using Edison for recording audio is super comfortable and often totally overlooked.
If you mark a part of your song in the playlist, you can record multiple takes with Edison, and it will automatically insert jump markers for every single take.
After that you can just drag and drop a take anywhere in the playlist

(I actually wish, there'd be a similar function for recording MIDI notes. I mean with multiple takes.)


I am using FLStudio for quite some time now, and there are many little things, which make it great for me. But most important is still the Pianoroll and the Step Sequencer.

I am coming from clicking in my notes, and the Pianoroll in FLStudio is really just the fastes and most comfortable tool to do that I've ever found.
Also it's so easy to make good drum loops by using the Step Sequencer together with the Browser on the left side. It totally kills every drum-plugin for quantized drums.
(For more realistic sounding drums with "human" rhythms, FPC is a great tool by the way.)

The Lifetime Free Upgrades are great as well.
Besides always being up to date with my DAW, I got stuff like Vocodex (the best and most versatile Vocoder in existence) for free.

I also love all the routing possibilities with the internal Controllers.
Alone the ability to insert own functions for routed parameters is absolutely neat.
And now we also got the Patcher (which is not at its full potential yet, but I hope it will get there with the next big update ... could be a game changer then).


There are a lot of other cool and tricky tools in FLStudio.
I think it's the perfect DAW Software for geeks, who really want to go crazy with effects/routing/synth-tinkering.


Of course -like any DAW Software- it's not perfect.
But I'd say, if you primarily work with virtual instruments (especially on loop based music), it's definetly one of the best programs you can get.

[elassi]

I think the most important was 10-15 years ago, at that time you couldn't do shit with Cubase/Cakewalk/others unless you had hardware. There were only a couple of apps (and a ton of trackers, but mostly varying in their # of lanes) in which you could get *sound* on a normal system.

Rubberduck, Hammerhead... those were the days.

[LawrenceF]

So what do you guys do when you're recording 10-12 tracks at the same time, use 10-12 Edison instances? Or is Edison multitrack?

Just asking because I've never used it. Thanks.

[T-CM11]

So what do you guys do when you're recording 10-12 tracks at the same time, use 10-12 Edison instances? Or is Edison multitrack?

Just asking because I've never used it. Thanks.

Just record it into the Playlist. After that you can always drag and drop the tracks in and back out of Edison.

[Arglebargle]

honestly, recording a band in FL Studio sounds dreadful. The same way performing electronic music live would probably suck with Reaper.