FL Users, what's your favourite feature of the FL Studio

[Hipster Bales]

For me it's the Channel Rack, as you can add ABSOLUTELY anything into it (e.g. samples, synths, Patcher, etc).

What is your favourite feature of FL?

[Benedict]

The Off button hihi

Seriously now: FL is very clever, it led a lot of DAWs and did things its own way. I have always hugely respected FL and what it achieved, as I saw it grow from nothing. I think the Piano Roll is perhaps the best thing (at least until Bitwig 5).

For me, the problem is twofold (and a personal choice):
a) FL is completely loop-based in mindset. Which is fine if you compost (sic) in loops, not at all if you compose linearly which is what I have and will always do by preference as to me music is a progression over time, whereas loops are stuck in time.
b) FL gets very cluttered very fast. There are sooooooooo many bits & pieces that seem to tumble over each other with little to no sense of workflow. Reason I love for the clarity of flow. I can change things that matter, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel every sound or change.

So I can start an idea in FL, but never move to the next step without feeling lost/overwhelmed etc.

[dune_rave]

- cool instruments like sytrus
- built in visualizer (zgameeditor)
- stem separation
- Control surface (fruity dashboard), Patcher
- DAW functions as VST
- using Directwave to sample vsti plugins

[Yorrrrrr]

Fruity Dance.

[Hipster Bales]

- cool instruments like sytrus
- built in visualizer (zgameeditor)
- stem separation
- Control surface (fruity dashboard), Patcher
- DAW functions as VST
- using Directwave to sample vsti plugins

Wow, those are amazing (especially Sytrus & Patcher). Harmor & Harmless are also godlike synths.
I've not used DirectWave yet, but I'll look into it

[Hipster Bales]

The Off button hihi

Seriously now: FL is very clever, it led a lot of DAWs and did things its own way. I have always hugely respected FL and what it achieved, as I saw it grow from nothing. I think the Piano Roll is perhaps the best thing (at least until Bitwig 5).

For me, the problem is twofold (and a personal choice):
a) FL is completely loop-based in mindset. Which is fine if you compost (sic) in loops, not at all if you compose linearly which is what I have and will always do by preference as to me music is a progression over time, whereas loops are stuck in time.
b) FL gets very cluttered very fast. There are sooooooooo many bits & pieces that seem to tumble over each other with little to no sense of workflow. Reason I love for the clarity of flow. I can change things that matter, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel every sound or change.

So I can start an idea in FL, but never move to the next step without feeling lost/overwhelmed etc.

That depends on the producer in my opinion, because I'm fluent in FL and loops are not part of my workflow whatsoever. If it wasn't for FL, most DAWs (with the exception of Cubase and Impulse Tracker (a 15-year-old like me isn't expected to know what Impulse Tracker is but, here we are) the DAW market would be replaced with samplers & sequencers.

[telecharge]

Mine is: free updates for life = never-ending new features

[Hipster Bales]

Mine is: free updates for life = never-ending new features

That's a very good feature.

[telecharge]

Benedict is a smart cookie, though, and I give him props for his Reason evangelism.

[Hipster Bales]

Fruity Dance.

FL-chan is very cute though.

[E_Anderson]

The Off button hihi

Seriously now: FL is very clever, it led a lot of DAWs and did things its own way. I have always hugely respected FL and what it achieved, as I saw it grow from nothing. I think the Piano Roll is perhaps the best thing (at least until Bitwig 5).

For me, the problem is twofold (and a personal choice):
a) FL is completely loop-based in mindset. Which is fine if you compost (sic) in loops, not at all if you compose linearly which is what I have and will always do by preference as to me music is a progression over time, whereas loops are stuck in time.
b) FL gets very cluttered very fast. There are sooooooooo many bits & pieces that seem to tumble over each other with little to no sense of workflow. Reason I love for the clarity of flow. I can change things that matter, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel every sound or change.

So I can start an idea in FL, but never move to the next step without feeling lost/overwhelmed etc.

That depends on the producer in my opinion, because I'm fluent in FL and loops are not part of my workflow whatsoever. If it wasn't for FL, most DAWs (with the exception of Cubase and Impulse Tracker (a 15-year-old like me isn't expected to know what Impulse Tracker is but, here we are) the DAW market would be replaced with samplers & sequencers.

Patterns are loops. Users obviously can write as many patterns as they want, and the workflow is quite creative, but it lends itself VERY WELL to repeating blocks of music. So patterns aren't literally loops, but there is a constant inclination to loop what you've done. This is both a hole to avoid stepping in and a wonderful boon for the producer.

To geek out with you, OP, Harmor and Patcher are easily my favorite parts. Thank goodness I snagged a VST license for Harmor before those disappeared, but it's too bad it's not super stable in REAPER

[anomandaris1]

The Off button hihi

Seriously now: FL is very clever, it led a lot of DAWs and did things its own way. I have always hugely respected FL and what it achieved, as I saw it grow from nothing. I think the Piano Roll is perhaps the best thing (at least until Bitwig 5).

For me, the problem is twofold (and a personal choice):
a) FL is completely loop-based in mindset. Which is fine if you compost (sic) in loops, not at all if you compose linearly which is what I have and will always do by preference as to me music is a progression over time, whereas loops are stuck in time.
b) FL gets very cluttered very fast. There are sooooooooo many bits & pieces that seem to tumble over each other with little to no sense of workflow. Reason I love for the clarity of flow. I can change things that matter, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel every sound or change.

So I can start an idea in FL, but never move to the next step without feeling lost/overwhelmed etc.

FL is pretty organized nowadays thanks to all improvements they added in the last few years in terms of being able to have similar workflow to other DAWs without unlinked automation , manual routing of mixers etc. The good part is that they haven't forced to use these features, so it can be as chaotic as you want it to be. About the loop-based part - I don't agree, because you can easily write in piano roll without any looped patterns.

[Hipster Bales]

The Off button hihi

Seriously now: FL is very clever, it led a lot of DAWs and did things its own way. I have always hugely respected FL and what it achieved, as I saw it grow from nothing. I think the Piano Roll is perhaps the best thing (at least until Bitwig 5).

For me, the problem is twofold (and a personal choice):
a) FL is completely loop-based in mindset. Which is fine if you compost (sic) in loops, not at all if you compose linearly which is what I have and will always do by preference as to me music is a progression over time, whereas loops are stuck in time.
b) FL gets very cluttered very fast. There are sooooooooo many bits & pieces that seem to tumble over each other with little to no sense of workflow. Reason I love for the clarity of flow. I can change things that matter, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel every sound or change.

So I can start an idea in FL, but never move to the next step without feeling lost/overwhelmed etc.

That depends on the producer in my opinion, because I'm fluent in FL and loops are not part of my workflow whatsoever. If it wasn't for FL, most DAWs (with the exception of Cubase and Impulse Tracker (a 15-year-old like me isn't expected to know what Impulse Tracker is but, here we are) the DAW market would be replaced with samplers & sequencers.

Patterns are loops. Users obviously can write as many patterns as they want, and the workflow is quite creative, but it lends itself VERY WELL to repeating blocks of music. So patterns aren't literally loops, but there is a constant inclination to loop what you've done. This is both a hole to avoid stepping in and a wonderful boon for the producer.

To geek out with you, OP, Harmor and Patcher are easily my favorite parts. Thank goodness I snagged a VST license for Harmor before those disappeared, but it's too bad it's not super stable in REAPER

By loops I mean the kind of loops you do in GarageBand.

[E_Anderson]

By loops I mean the kind of loops you do in GarageBand.

Yes, I was explaining what I think was likely Benedict's reasoning for describing FL's orientation towards loops, which I mostly agree with. You can have patterns, even per-instrument, that just keep going, and it's not that different (orchestras aside) from the more generally linear workflow of a "normal" DAW, but it takes just a bit more from the user to create new patterns and piano rolls within those patterns, sort of like how trying to produce with the same Pattern-based workflow in any other daw takes just a bit more from the user in splicing song chunks or using an arrangement grid. This isn't a problem, it's just design. FL Studio has a lot of upsides and very creative tools.

[gloomypuppet]

Undo and redo, those have to be the most used and convenient.