FL Studio 12 Released!

[KingTuck]

On something of a different note. Gol, could you check the FL Wrapper compatibility with the following Tone2 plugins: Nemesis, Rayblaster and Saurus 2? They all require fixed size buffers to work properly. This obviously seems like an issue on Tone2's part, but I know that Synthmaster also required fixed size buffers until the FL 12 update where it mysteriously stopped needing it to function properly (Synthmaster hadn't been updated since FL 12)

I don't work on the wrapper (that would be for Fred), but yes it's normally a bug on the plugin's side.

One reason that could lead to a plugin not working in FL11 & working in FL12 would be a different setting in FL 12, like "align tick lengths".

Some plugins will just ignore the length that they're asked to render, that's plain wrong & clearly a bug.
Some others will process, sometimes because of paralellization, blocks of 4 or 8 samples, and may go wrong with non-multiples either by mistake of because the programmer didn't care.
So there are some plugins which mysteriously work when FL has this "align tick lengths" option on (that's just there to spare a tiny bit of CPU).

I gave that a try and it doesn't seem to have fixed it. I'd be willing to assume it's on Tone2. Markus (the programmer for Tone2) doesn't consider FL Studio to be a professional DAW and is quicker to urge people away from using it than he is on alleviating these compatibility problems. Not even all their plugins have it. Whatever, weird stuff. Thanks for the suggestion.

[digitalboytn]

I can answer that for myself. I like to learn, and a great way to learn is to experience things that aren't what you 'need'. Try to see how other people do things, how other people's tools work and experience new ways of doing things.

[Robert Randolph]

Wait, is tony tony chopper the Gol from the flstudio team?

Yeah.

How do you even get this far not understanding how time signatures work.

It's amazing how adamant he is about being wrong too

Believe it or not, it's not musicians who write software, it's programmers.

And the only thing I have "understood" about time signatures is that there was nothing to understand, only an illogical convention to know about.

I don't even see how people can argue with this. Do people honestly not realize that music theory is hugely illogical and arbitrary? I find it hard to believe that the thought wouldn't have occurred at one point or another. It's use and application throughout the times is irrelevant. You can paint with a rock, but that hardly makes it a good tool. Even if some people are really good at it.

Music theory (like all theories) is an explanation or set of explanations for things that are known to be (or in this case, known to be pleasing to a population).

Music theories (plural, as there are many that get lumped under the umbrella of 'music theory') are simply a set of explanations for an illogical and arbitrary thing: music.

[KingTuck]

Wait, is tony tony chopper the Gol from the flstudio team?

Yeah.

How do you even get this far not understanding how time signatures work.

It's amazing how adamant he is about being wrong too

Believe it or not, it's not musicians who write software, it's programmers.

And the only thing I have "understood" about time signatures is that there was nothing to understand, only an illogical convention to know about.

I don't even see how people can argue with this. Do people honestly not realize that music theory is hugely illogical and arbitrary? I find it hard to believe that the thought wouldn't have occurred at one point or another. It's use and application throughout the times is irrelevant. You can paint with a rock, but that hardly makes it a good tool. Even if some people are really good at it.

Music theory (like all theories) is an explanation or set of explanations for things that are known to be (or in this case, known to be pleasing to a population).

Music theories (plural, as there are many that get lumped under the umbrella of 'music theory') are simply a set of explanations for an illogical and arbitrary thing: music.

The semantics aren't important here. When people adopt the use of "music theory" to mean the most prevalent and popular taught and known music theories, it becomes the default definition of that word in this conversation. This just takes focus away from the conversation.

That first definition is subject to fault. I simply don't believe you would make it far with that. Too many "what if" situations present themselves. In any case it's a very dumb, very boring, unresolvable topic that I don't have a frail enough ego to want to launch into.

[murnau]

Gol, most people here only reply if they find something (they think) they can niggle about.You can be certain that the same people will not reply if your post have a point they can't rip apart. Not all members but many. If you keep that in mind you will have a wonderful time here.

Uh, he has more posts here than you do. Not to mention, you know, he's one of the most active DAW developers on discussion forums.

Pretty sure he's aware of how forums work

trapped! ..now that was easy!

[murnau]

The idea that BPM is displayed in quarter notes is actually a bit silly. It shouldn't be necessary to do the mental conversion to this implicit value before you know what to expect.

That only shows that you didn't know better. Coming from a classical background with piano playing i can assure you that it's indeed quarter notes 99% of the time. Every tick of the metronom is a quarter note ask Czerny. Why do you think they set for example 69–76 to be Andante? Tho it's not of much help either.

Just because it could be other then quarter notes doesn't mean it's practical. I guess this is because you are more kind of guy who like to "talk about" then actually playing? Could that be?

[EvilDragon]

An awful lot of 3/8, 6/8, etc. pieces I ever played on piano were with metronome mark set in 1/8 notes, not 1/4 notes, so...

[murnau]

If it's 6/8 i played 2/4 all the time (compound duple). Especially when it is a fast piece. I used to, can't help it.

[trimph1]

You guys are making my head explode.

[reflex]

On something of a different note. Gol, could you check the FL Wrapper compatibility with the following Tone2 plugins: Nemesis, Rayblaster and Saurus 2? They all require fixed size buffers to work properly. This obviously seems like an issue on Tone2's part, but I know that Synthmaster also required fixed size buffers until the FL 12 update where it mysteriously stopped needing it to function properly (Synthmaster hadn't been updated since FL 12). That leads me to think that it's possible better compatibility could remove the need for the fixed size buffers and as such, the rather frustrating build up of latency from multiple instances of these plugins.

Please report this on our Techsupport forum.

I can't really do anything about it, though.

For Synthmaster, maybe there was an update of the plugins that removed this requirement? Or maybe the problem wasn't really fixed size buffers and it got fixed in some other way by a change in FL.

[BMoore]

I'd rather see requests for Snapchat integration than time signature whining.
Why invest time and money in a DAW missing "essential" features you "need"?

I can answer that for myself. I like to learn, and a great way to learn is to experience things that aren't what you 'need'. Try to see how other people do things, how other people's tools work and experience new ways of doing things.

Pretty sure we all do that when we do things other than eat, drink, breathe and take shelter.

This is also an interesting discussion, minus me unnecessarily being an asshole when I first joined it.

But there are no one DAW to learn and experience everything with. That's the point.
DAWs are "fixed", life experience is not.
And time signatures has a very easy workaround in any DAW.

[highkoo]

But there are no one DAW to learn and experience everything with. That's the point.
DAWs are "fixed", life experience is not.

+1

Unfortunately, I feel like the attitude at IL right now is that FL is very much less "fixed" than it has been...
And, there is a drive to 'fall in line' with the way other DAWs do things.

$10 says they take out the step sequencer entirely in v13...

[Orbit-50]

I'd rather see requests for Snapchat integration than...

.-.

[sjm]

So from what I can tell in the meantime, gol has managed to understand time signatures, and the discussion is now more about the semantics of BPM in a DAW.

Personally, I think the single most important thing is that the metronome and grids make sense, and correspond to the time signature. That means the metronome counting eighths, not quarters, when in x/8. I think the fact that in x/8, each eighth note represents a beat is something we've managed to agree on now.

When it comes to the BPM always being defined in quarters in your DAW, I can see a couple of issues from both sides.

On the one hand, does it make sense for the BPM to change between a 4/4 and 7/8 section when the tempo hasn't changed? Doesn't this have the potential to be confusing? After all, the tempo hasn't changed, so changing the BPM seems silly in the sense that the underlying length of a quarter note hasn't changed. On the other hand, counting beats in quarters in a song that is only in x/8 time also feels wrong.

I wonder if the solution isn't to have a number of options that are tied to tempo and key signature (including one defined at the project level). You could then change them whenever you add a time signature change. These would be:

• time signature (e.g. 4/4 or 7/8)
• metronome beat (defaults to the denominator, but can be set as you wish, e.g. to dotted quarter notes for 6/8)
• BPM (defaults to project settings)
• BPM unit, e.g. quarter or eighth notes (defaults to project settings)

Each time you add a time signature change marker, you would then have the option to change to a new time signature, metronome beat, and choose whether to change the tempo (BPM) and/or note used by the BPM counter (so you could go from 120 BPM to 140 BPM without changing the underlying note, representing a tempo change; or change from 120 BPM counted in eighths to 60 BPM counted in quarters without a tempo change).

The more musically inclined can thus do whatever they want, while people who don't understand or care about the nuances don't have to deal with them.

[reflex]

No, no online DB. When VSTHost fast-scans it simply does some form of quick-check on the files to see whats a VST DLL, whats a non-VST DLL, whats an Instrument, and whats an Effect. (MIDI too.) The detected plugins are then saved into an .ini file (Plugins.ini) containing a header, the path to the plugin and an identifier. (0=Inst, 1=FX, 2=MIDI.) The plugins are then displayed in the menu, which reflects the structure of the plugins dir. How exactly VSTHost is doing this i cant tell you, but im sure Hermann would be glad to give you the details in case youd like to hear more about it. (Ive dealt with him, hes a very nice and helpful person.)

I just tried VSTHost and its fast scan. It looks like it opens the plugins while scanning, so it seems more like FL's deep scan.