KVR Audio

Tannaliini · Post by **Tannaliini** » Wed Apr 22, 2020 11:23 am

Why did you choose FL? Did you switch from other DAW (from what and why)?

Trancit · Post by **Trancit** » Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:36 pm

Wow, what a question... I don´t know where to start...

My journey started as Emagic sold Logic to Apple... this honestly broke my heart and switching to a Mac was a very big NO-NO so I needed a replacement for my biggest love as Platinium 5.5 was so much ahead of all what the other offered...
At this time there wasn´t that much choice... Ableton was pure audio, afaik Reaper didn´t exist, neither did S1 and Cakewalk/Sonar was a very big mess as was Project5 and Orion...
For me it was a race between Cubase, Samplitude and FL Studio...

I chose first Cubase (SX at this time I think it was called) but somehow it didn´t gel with me even if I started with Cubase as my first DAW... so I got rid of that...
Samplitude offered sometime later a kind of rent-to-own which I tried about half a year but Samplitude I found very quirky when working mainly with VSTi´s ...

FL Studio was for me the most user friendly one which I grabbed immediately... it never had all the features the big ones did but it made sense to me...
It then came a long way from (don´t know exactly when I jumped on) V5 or so to now...

Was I really like about it nowadays:
- I always loved the UI of FLS... I never understood why so many people claimed it as a toy and I find it has even today the GUI of all...
- the little Sampler channel is nothing but genious...
- it´s got the best audio editor (Edison), best additive synth (Harmor), best Slicer (Slicex), best Vocoder (Vocodex), one of the best Transient shapers, one of the best 303 emu´s and one of the best Waveshapers available on the market... I find the other included FX very very useable too!!
- I would lie if I wouldn´t speak about lifetime free updates as well...
- IL is a very very nice company to deal with in regards of support, communication in general and not to forget that IL was always very innovative and their time ahead... many features now present in other DAWs have their origin in FLS
- still the best PR editor on the market
- constantly improved at a quite high pace...

Of course FLS has it quirks like a quite complicated workflow, overcomplicated audio handling and some issues with their automation... nevertheless this will be just a matter of time...

EDIT: I forgot to mention the most important point for me...

I tried to escape many many times but at the very end I always found my way home and it still puts a smile on my face when opening the app and start working with the internals... so light on resources... hundreds of internal fx instances with a RAM footprint of 100MB and a smiling CPU... FLS natives load so instantly they are already loaded before you even finish clicking on the button...

wackob · Post by **wackob** » Wed Apr 22, 2020 1:35 pm

Reasonable price and free lifetime upgrades was a pretty big deal for me. Would hate to invest 200€ in every update.

Also FL Studio is awesome. I admit I'd like to have Ableton and Logic but I mostly went for FL Studio because its a great DAW (I can draw out ideas pretty fast), the updates are awesome (and free) and I like the interface lol.

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Thu Apr 23, 2020 1:31 pm

Simple. I discovered Fruityloops very very long time a go completely randomly when I was getting more into multimedia production. I was just checking out all the stuff I could find. I think it was the first release of Fruityloops. What I liked was how easy it was to throw some stuff together for a non-musical person like myself. I think it's still the best DAW for anyone starting out, and especially, if you are non-musical person who likes to experiment with sound and music making.

Since then I have continued to use Fruityloops and still like it very much. And I also like trolling IL about it too.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Apr 23, 2020 1:34 pm

I eat Fruity Loops for breakfast.

Caine123 · Post by **Caine123** » Thu Apr 23, 2020 4:17 pm

Very good post Trancit.

I hate and love fl studio. I think the bashing is mostly of people (like in all genres ps vs xbox, porsche vs ferrari whatever) they cannot forget the development and accept that their used daw isnt the go to anymore....

It was more coincidence. I just saw fl studio in the past and downloaded the demo and found it very easy to use without reading much the manual. So i just bought it and it wasnt 500 bucks costing. Yeah i didnt know about vsts etc. So thats when the price increased

but for that i got lifetime upgrades. Only when i started with hardwsre and wanted to record audio in fl9 or so i found out how it sucks and sucked.... so i started to look around but never got into all the cables and stuff and it collected dust and i got back to vsts etc. When my projects also started crashing and il team always wanted me to start detective work and rolling back and recreating the exact steps WHAT THE f**k! to get the projects crash i gave up. Cause the crashes are 90% random.... and still their diagnostic tool is a joke and you are stuck.

I started to get studio one. Never crashed like that so far and if it did it did while adding a plugin and you knew which one. I updated it and it worked. Tadaaaa. Easy. I use studio one for mastering mostly etc. Rock solid.
Bitwig i didnt play much around but wanted it dor its modulations.

But all these other daws didnt motivate me to have the fast pattern and layout workflow for ideas and piano roll. I still dont understand why they are mostly so laggy, missing festures and just ugly looking! Yeah i know fl studio users need fancy ui design.... biggest bs i read a lot. Fl studio is easy on the eyes and fluid in the Windows etc.

What still sucks big times. No crash protection and audio editing in playlist is a disaster.

The name was not sounding so pro but come on. Fl studio was just a drum machine? First and it was another time.

And the other daws have other strengths and cons so i never understand the fanboy comparings and jokes. Use what you are comfortable with. Hence i think sbout getting ableton lol but not for the shitty piano roll.

RememberBeats · Post by **RememberBeats** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 7:52 pm

-Most intuitive DAW I ever tried (I tried Magix back in 07, Cubase, Ableton, and Maschine).
-The workflow it's perffect for me.
-Lifetime updates.
-Reasonable price.
-Amazing development team. (I suggested them a function on one of their plugins and they added it to the next update. I suggested another change on that plugin, and they did the same).
-You can edit a f***ng video with his ZGamerVisualizer (this saves me more than 2 hours of editing on Premiere & After Effects)
-Their stock plugins are very good.

The only bad thing I could relate is the lack of midi controllers integration, but now they're allowing midi scripting in the 20.7 update, so every single controller will have a deep integration with the software).

Even with that scripting thing, I would love to have an exclusive controller like Maschine MKIII but for FL Studio.

And talking about that people who call it a toy... Some of the biggest producers and billboard hot 100 producers use it, so they can call it a toy if they feel good with it.

On the other hand, I don't need to disrespect another DAWs and every DAW makes almost the same, you just have to choose the one that fits your workflow.

Acid Mitch · Post by **Acid Mitch** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:04 pm

I switched from Octamed on Amiga 1200 to Fruity Loops on Pc because I loved the drum machine style interface, it had better effects and the softsynths worked in realtime. Also it was quite cheap. I used a freeware version that came with a magazine (I forget which) for a while and then upgraded .

djmino02 · Post by **djmino02** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:04 pm

I didn't. There's only one Fruity Loops and that's a cereal not a DAW.

Jbravo · Post by **Jbravo** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:14 pm

I wanted to try out some VST instruments for the first time and it was free to play with (v2.6). I was used to trackers, mostly Fasttracker 2, and the patterns/playlist architecture was very similar, just scrolling sideways instead of vertically, likewise inputting notes, only with a mouse instead of keyboard. I know people find it an awkward method but for me it was very quick and intuitive

clipnotic · Post by **clipnotic** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:36 pm

I use Fruity Loops / FL Studio since 15 years. Before that, I worked with hardware and old computers, for example an Atari Mega ST4 with Notator SL. That was the time, MIDI really worked!

I switched to Fruity Loops, because compared to hardware it was very easy to handle samples and I like the pattern and piano roll system. For many "producers" and VST developers at this time was Fruity Loops just a toy for beginners and they mostly praised Cubase like a god and made fun of me. If I had problems with VSTs, they mostly told me, that Fruity Loops and later FL Studio is the problem and I should use a "professional DAW".

Some versions of FL Studio had problems and the biggest problem was one of their developer, because he ignored obviously problems and necessary features. So I tried some versions of Ableton, Sonar and Cubase, but I didn't like their workflow and all of them missed features, I needed. Especially for genres like DnB, Neurofunk, IDM, Oldschool Electro ... FL Studio has the way most creative features.

Over the years I had sometimes quarrels in german forums and some discussions with the Image Line developers, because of bugs, timestretching and PDC problems in some old versions, too. And their refusal to integrate more MIDI features stills sucks ...

But then came FL Studio 20

They really reworked much, fixed many problems and now FL Studio runs really tight and good VSTs are running great. The backward compatibility is great, I can still open years old projects from previous versions and especially their plugins for mix and mastering are very good, too!

And thanks to free lifetime updates, I can work with all new FL Studio versions in the future for free my whole life and now I'm laughing about Ableton and Cubase toy users!

Eclectrophonic · Post by **Eclectrophonic** » Fri May 01, 2020 12:51 pm

Trancit wrote: Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:36 pm Wow, what a question... I don´t know where to start...

many features now present in other DAWs have their origin in FLS
- still the best PR editor on the market
- constantly improved at a quite high pace...

Of course FLS has it quirks like a quite complicated workflow, overcomplicated audio handling and some issues with their automation... nevertheless this will be just a matter of time...

So what features were FL ahead of the game with? I'll take a guess at one - chord painting in the piano roll?

How often is FL Studio updated typically?

What are your issues with automation?

Thanks!

Trancit · Post by **Trancit** » Fri May 01, 2020 7:13 pm

Eclectrophonic wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 12:51 pm So what features were FL ahead of the game with? I'll take a guess at one - chord painting in the piano roll?

It´s not a single feature in particular but how this complete thing work... too many features to list as this would be more like writing a manual than just mentioning a few features...

Sadly it´s hard to explain but 99% of all FL Studio user who have deeper experiences with other DAWs will tell you the same... as laborious FL Studio as whole enviroment sometimes might be but the PR editor on it´s own is the best they´ve got under their fingertips...

How often is FL Studio updated typically?

Every few month...

What are your issues with automation?

That´s again something hard to explain... more something you notice when you have worked with both ways... the typical automation lane where every automated parameter got it´s seperate lane with a continous envelope vs. Automation clips in the FL Studio way...
Here are just a few points:
- no selecting of multiple envelope points and therefore no copy/paste/move/edit of sections of the envelope
- inserting new points never got the initial value
- no number edit of point values
- no time stretch for a curve or section of it
- no merge for different clips
- LFO function doesn´t create editable points and so it´s not further editable
- inserting of automation for non FL native plugins is often a bit cumbersome...
- to place a clip where you want it to you have to slect a playlist region first
- copied and made unique automation clips have to be remapped manually to the target they had before...

... should be enough for now...

Imho atm there is only one DAW combining both approaches (continous envelope and automation clip) correctly... and that´s good ´ol Reaper

clipnotic · Post by **clipnotic** » Fri May 01, 2020 10:12 pm

You know, that you can work with events instead of using automation clips, too? And automation with 3rd party plugins is exactly the same, just use the "browser parameters" option. And you can link as much parameters as you want to one target, too, just remove the link conflict ...

billcarroll · Post by **billcarroll** » Sat May 02, 2020 1:13 am

Is there a DAW with better MIDI editing than FL Studio?

Why did you choose FL Studio?