KVR Audio

summer2000 · Post by **summer2000** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:25 pm

Right now I'm mainly using Ableton Live 5 and Reason 3 as my main music production tools. I never really gave FL a chance cause I didn’t like the pattern aspect of the thing and the sequencer. But lately I've been hearing a lot of positive buzz about the upcoming FL Studio 6 and with the current nagging bugs in Live 5.02, I'm willing to check out FL 6 if the MIDI sequencer and audio recording is up to par.

Can you guys that use FL tell why you chose it over Live or Reason? What are FL's strengths and weaknesses (if any)?

I also own an MPC4000 so I'd also like to know if it'll be easy to incorporate it with FL and sync them together while producing my tracks.

Rucafest · Post by **Rucafest** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:51 pm

Well i have been using FL sincre its aerly days and its simply getting better and better each release.
I also use Cubase and have used Reason and many others but at the end of the day i always go back to FL due to its ease and speed of workflow.
In FL your ideas can really develop rather quick.
Why i choose FL over Reason:
3rd party VST, VSTI, DXI support
Much quicker and less fidling than Reason (ie having to create so many mixers and rewiring everything up in Reason just to create a Group Channel for drums lets say), in FL simply route all the channels into a subgroup and voila.
Havent tried Ableton so cant relly say much to compare but fL's live mode seems to do work just fine for me!
As for the MPC4000, im ure it can work with FL
Overal, for me FL is the way a music app should be, FUN, Intuitive, easy to use but still complex enough to develop in and learn as your experience grows. Then theres the fact that FL is by far the BEST tool for greating great Loops and drums, no doubts about this one, add all the nice features coming up in FL6 and im sorry to say but the competition is about to start worriyng!!!
http://www.flstudio.com/promo.asp?p=DHIDGI425 there you go use this link if you wanna get it with 10% discount, I advise you the Producer edition or the XXL.
Cheers and good luck with FL....
PS OH and lets not forget that if you use that link, in other words you are purchasing the online version and not the boxed version, you will be entitled to FREE LIfetime Upgrades, ie: Version 6.5, FL7, FL8, FL9.....
No other software i know gives the upgrades free into newer versions...

summer2000 · Post by **summer2000** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:57 pm

Thanks Rucafest for your input. Can you tell me what's the difference between the Producer and XXL Edition?

CrownRoyal · Post by **CrownRoyal** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:57 pm

summer2000 wrote:Right now I'm mainly using Ableton Live 5 and Reason 3 as my main music production tools. I never really gave FL a chance cause I didn’t like the pattern aspect of the thing and the sequencer. But lately I've been hearing a lot of positive buzz about the upcoming FL Studio 6 and with the current nagging bugs in Live 5.02, I'm willing to check out FL 6 if the MIDI sequencer and audio recording is up to par.

Can you guys that use FL tell why you chose it over Live or Reason? What are FL's strengths and weaknesses (if any)?

I also own an MPC4000 so I'd also like to know if it'll be easy to incorporate it with FL and sync them together while producing my tracks.

I've dumped Live for FL and eXT. I'm delighted. Both are stable. The only thing that I don't like about FL is its non-standard GUI. I'd prefer something that looked more like a Windows app. I just don't like the look of it. I love the way it works, though (that's what matters most to me). I adore the MIDI editor. I hated Live's MIDI editor. I also hated how buggy Live 5 was for certain apps. Guitar Rig crashes the $hit out of Live 5 but not in eXT. BFD works better in FL than in Live, too.

Of course, this is on my machine. I know that eXT and FL have me staying up late at night.

I don't even use Reason anymore. The pattern seq. in FL blows away Reason's crappy Matrix.

I like FL a lot but that's just me. I'm not using any outboard gear, either. I use a Trigger Finger and Keystation Pro 88 with a E-MU 1820. Works GREAT!

CrownRoyal · Post by **CrownRoyal** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:01 pm

Rucafest wrote:Well i have been using FL sincre its aerly days and its simply getting better and better each release.
I also use Cubase and have used Reason and many others but at the end of the day i always go back to FL due to its ease and speed of workflow.
In FL your ideas can really develop rather quick.
Why i choose FL over Reason:
3rd party VST, VSTI, DXI support
Much quicker and less fidling than Reason (ie having to create so many mixers and rewiring everything up in Reason just to create a Group Channel for drums lets say), in FL simply route all the channels into a subgroup and voila.
Havent tried Ableton so cant relly say much to compare but fL's live mode seems to do work just fine for me!
As for the MPC4000, im ure it can work with FL
Overal, for me FL is the way a music app should be, FUN, Intuitive, easy to use but still complex enough to develop in and learn as your experience grows. Then theres the fact that FL is by far the BEST tool for greating great Loops and drums, no doubts about this one, add all the nice features coming up in FL6 and im sorry to say but the competition is about to start worriyng!!!
http://www.flstudio.com/promo.asp?p=DHIDGI425 there you go use this link if you wanna get it with 10% discount, I advise you the Producer edition or the XXL.
Cheers and good luck with FL....
PS OH and lets not forget that if you use that link, in other words you are purchasing the online version and not the boxed version, you will be entitled to FREE LIfetime Upgrades, ie: Version 6.5, FL7, FL8, FL9.....
No other software i know gives the upgrades free into newer versions...

I totally agree with you. Excellent points.

summer2000 · Post by **summer2000** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:08 pm

The MIDI sequencer/editor is quirky in Live and not to mention the program doesn't work all that well with some of my VST plugins. It crashes and freezes my computer way too many times for me to get any productive use out of it. Are all the features that can be found in any pro DAW included in FL's sequencer.

How stable is FL with VST plugins? How's the workflow? Is it easy and simple to use when creating any type of music styles? I mainly produce hiphop, jazz, and electronic tracks.

CrownRoyal · Post by **CrownRoyal** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:15 pm

summer2000 wrote:The MIDI sequencer/editor is quirky in Live and not to mention the program doesn't work all that well with some of my VST plugins. It crashes and freezes my computer way too many times for me to get any productive use out of it. Are all the features that can be found in any pro DAW included in FL's sequencer.

How stable is FL with VST plugins? How's the workflow? Is it easy and simple to use when creating any type of music styles? I mainly produce hiphop, jazz, and electronic tracks.

Download the demo and try it. There's lots of goodies. Live has some nice effects but FL is better IMHO. The best thing to do is download it and try it. Remember that it is different than Live's way of doing things. I just adore FL's MIDI editor. I can do things twice as fast. The chords command, the strum and many other features of the MIDI editor sold me on it.

Try the demo. I can't think of a program that you can get so much for so little.

Cheers!

ceenda · Post by **ceenda** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:20 pm

FL's MIDI editor is indeed fantastic. And with version 6, they've finally incorporated the event editor into the Piano roll, so no more awkward flipping backwards and forwards between 2 windows.

I just wish the actual sequencing of MIDI patterns could be less dependant on the playlist-style form of sequencing that it currently uses. Great for *unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish* x 1,000,000 measures. Not for more varied music, at least without taking up 4 scrolling pages of pattern playlist.

summer2000 · Post by **summer2000** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:25 pm

Yep. I'll be downloading it as soon as I get home later. How tight is the quantization in FL? Live sometimes record my notes ahead or late at times even when I enable auto quantize and then I have to manually go back and fix everything. I lose a lot of inspritation and time this way.

Will FL 6 be way too challenging for a newbie or is it easy to pick up and start basic recording right away?

verstaerker · Post by **verstaerker** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:25 pm

btw if u choose to buy it - pm me and i tell u how to get 10% off from IL

summer2000 · Post by **summer2000** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:32 pm

ceenda wrote:I just wish the actual sequencing of MIDI patterns could be less dependant on the playlist-style form of sequencing that it currently uses. Great for *unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish*-*unk-tish* x 1,000,000 measures. Not for more varied music, at least without taking up 4 scrolling pages of pattern playlist.

That's one of the main things that put me off when I tried out FL a couple years ago. I thought they would have fixed that by now. That's why I ended up buying Live and Reason instead.

Baniev · Post by **Baniev** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 3:39 pm

I´ve not read the whole thread but i want say that i choose FL Studio because i can work much faster than in any other host, in cubase i need 5 times longer to make my ideas true than in FL Studio, ok the intermal Synths suck but the effects are really fine, easy to use and need low cpu, i alzo find the event editor great, it´s like realy like drawing your ideas into sound, it´s so easy to automate the things over it ´that you don´t need much time at all and can conzentrate on your music and on your mastering.

Wopelka · Post by **Wopelka** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 3:46 pm

verstaerker wrote:btw if u choose to buy it - pm me and i tell u how to get 10% off from IL

no no PM me, i can have you 10%, too.

ceenda · Post by **ceenda** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 3:52 pm

Wopelka wrote:
verstaerker wrote:btw if u choose to buy it - pm me and i tell u how to get 10% off from IL
no no PM me, i can have you 10%, too.

I will beat both their rates by throwing in a fine set of "his and her's" hand towels and a box of Ferrero Rocher...

Rucafest · Post by **Rucafest** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 4:09 pm

Well the FL producer Edition is the same as the XXL version except in the XXL version U get aslo the Fruity Soundfont player, Drumsynth Live, Wasp, and some other stuff wich comes in demo mode with FL Producer Edition.
Otherwise they are the Full versions of the software.
As for performance with external VST's, i find FL to be rather good and stable, depending on your system and the actual VST in question, some SE vst can be rather heavy on the cpu in most Audio programs that ive tried, so it really depends on lot of things.
What i love about FL as well is the fact automation is soooo easy and simple to do and pretty much everything in FL can and is Automatable.
Then in terms of the Playlist, it really is far better than Reasons, and the Pianoroll window in FL, no need to say, the best in all software packages that i have tried and i think even Computer Music made a note of this.
Mike Oldfield is using FL now as well, after ditching Cubase or Protools due to the ever growing costs of maintaining those software packages

Thinking about buying FL 6